the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, "I'll be dead," you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar.
In Margaret Atwood's "The Year of the Flood," the author explores the complex relationship between language and the perception of death. She suggests that the very act of articulating the concept of one's own death—by using phrases like "I'll be dead"—reinforces the speaker's existence, as the pronoun "I" indicates an ongoing awareness of self. This linguistic observation highlights the struggle to envision life beyond corporeal existence.
Atwood proposes that this phenomenon has contributed to the belief in the immortality of the soul. By using grammar as a lens to understand our notions of existence and mortality, she reveals how language shapes our understanding of life and the persistent notion that something of us continues after death. Thus, the book presents a thought-provoking perspective on how communication influences our ideas about life, death, and what it means to be alive.
