There is a widespread idea that life and death are opposing concepts, with the latter being widely feared. Many find that one of the common reasons to fear death is the unknown element (Bauman 66); most do not know how, when or why they will die or what will happen to their memory of those they care about. The unknown and foreign character of death thus becomes a driving force to justify its prevention. What if we could question the experience of death? A learned thought experiment that allows one to interrogate the experience of death opens up the possibility of removing some degree of the alien nature of death and its terrifying emptiness of the unknown. IB-prescribed literature provides an opportunity such as Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo offers an alternative to the typical, fear-ridden orientation toward death by removing the importance of the bifurcating barrier between biological life and its end and exploring the possibilities of death. Normalization of the relationship between life and death requires a certain degree of oscillation of consciousness between acceptance and denial of the inevitability of death. The narrative allows the reader to explore such oscillation and be introduced to death by blurring the line between life and death by refusing to identify the characters as being biologically alive or dead in the first place. Such a method of misidentification augments the oscillation process as a whole and constructs a story in which the ability to alternate between recognizing the inevitability of death and not doing so is replaced by engagement with characters who have already passed and which must still pass. this calls into question how the reader orients towards death as the narrative introduces the character to the middle of paper......his past. It is within this evaluation that we see that going from life to death is a common experience to be lived by everyone. Constant exposure to death and the desensitizing effects of this exposure make the bifurcating barrier between life and its end a construct of our xenophobic orientation toward death. If death is accepted and experienced, at least to the extent that Pedro Paramo allows, the foreign nature of death becomes less foreign and easier to recognize. Works Cited Bauman, Zygmunt. “Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality.” Essay. University of Leeds, 1995. Johnson, Leigh. “HAUNTED DEMOCRACIES AND THE POLITICS OF POSSIBILITY: A DECONSTRUCTIVE ANALYSIS OF TRUTH COMMISSIONS.” Philosophy thesis. 2007. Rulfo, Juan. “Pedro Paramo.” 1955. California Lutheran University. December 12 2013 .