ABSTRACT
Studies and theories on death-related stress and distress tend to focus on transactions within the core of the personal network of the individual threatened by more or less imminent death. Links between those three words—death, distress, and solidarity-are numerous and important. Solidarity is also made of less palpable references to others. Connections with and among a larger community give their focus to two other contributions. A character in one of the novels analyzed by Joseph J. Levy and Alexis Nouss compares the gay condition to the holocaust, the brutal destruction of an important proportion of the Jewish people. In traditional societies, the rites pertaining to sickness and death were formal, collective, and rather uniform. The intensity of the collective threat to the gay community gives rise to metaphors of extermination. A character in one of the novels analyzed by Levy and Nouss compares the gay condition to the holocaust, the brutal destruction of an important proportion of the Jewish people.
