In this work we study the representation of death in seven adolescents. We follow longitudinally the possible changes resulting of such process. The corpus corresponds to 21compositions carried out in alternate years, by seven students of a private school in S. Paulo city, starting in the 6th. Grade of elementary school, with the reading and discussion of Death has seven heirs, and ending in the second grade of high-school. The analyses of the productions show: little influence by the literary text and the strength of the socio-cultural transmission of ideas and fantasies on death. The results also reveal that the human conflict present in the binomial natural/inevitable does not eliminate the individual and singular sense of the re-attribution of signification to collective experiences and that the denial of annihilation by means of life after death is maintained by the belief in reincarnation. The importance of school space for reflection on death is considered important.
Death and dying; adolescence; school