[...] The stillness and enclosedness of the poet's environment reflects an inner condition of decadent self-satisfaction, which Wallace depicts as stagnant or lifeless. Iannis Goerlandt says that "one of the points the story makes is that the end lies in this stasis, not in death itself." The story's title, "Death Is Not the End," is most naturally taken as referring to the artist's desire for immortality through art. But it is precisely this desire, Wallace implies, that causes death to come before the end. Paradoxically, the artist's desire to stand apart and transcend finitude or death will lead him to create dead or lifeless art; after all, there is only one way - as Cavell would say - to escape the human.