Death occurs daily and is a normal part of life. People see death in a condescending perspective, as it signifies the end of one’s living, but fail to see how death presents an individual’s journey. It is a cycle that has ultimately come to an end. Yet, America rather desire to depict death as controllable factor as many headfast think of preparing for their looks when death comes closer. Many Americans have come to dsire to acquire the embalming process without fully comprehending what goes on behind the scene.In “Behind the Formaldehyde Curtains,” Mitford uses metaphor, imagery, and a logical appeal to enlighten the audience of the underlying reality of embalming as a irrational procedural custom America has deemed as the norm with ignorance …show more content…
She informs the audience on the process of embalming, as a unethical method of caring for a deceased body. Throughout the passage, Mitford explains the horrendous details on the embalming process by using a fictional character named, Mr. Jones to inform the audience the possible occurrence to Mr. Jones and even the readers when facing death. Mitford gives an in depth, chronological process in which the mortician takes while handling Mr.Jones’ corpse. Majority of the time, the deceased relative singlehandedly give their loved one to a funeral home, are ignorant of what is actually performed to the corpse (Mitford 254). Mitford also enlightens the audience by stating the subject by comparing and contrasting the morality of embalming through cultural differences. In America, funerals are handled differently than in other places of the world, for example, when an English woman attended a funeral service in America, she was shocked to find her friend, “wearing a suntan makeup and just the wrong shade of lipstick,” that led her to nearly giggle (Mitford 259). Taking note of cultural differences, this shows how American funeral services objectify the deceased in order to display an appropriate normality of who they were prior to their …show more content…
She claims that death should be perceived as a beautiful thing, yet embalming the corpse of the dead presumably dilutes a person’s life journey. Death is an inevitable factor for every living organism on earth (Nagel). There is no way to avoid or escape from this reality and the way a person deals with the topic differs.All the scars, the imperfections of a person is altered with wax, blood is drained from the body and is replaced with the formaldehyde chemicals to preserve the body. These aspects ultimately to present the body during the memorial or funeral home of the dead. This is deemed immoral as morticians perform embalming without the consent of the deceased relatives. Rather, they perform the process as a implied consent. This action perceptibly conjure death as a matter of control. The desire to create normality within a body is then challenged by the ethical views of
Jonathan Kozol revealed the early period’s situation of education in American schools in his article Savage Inequalities. It seems like during that period, the inequality existed everywhere and no one had the ability to change it; however, Kozol tried his best to turn around this situation and keep track of all he saw. In the article, he used rhetorical strategies effectively to describe what he saw in that situation, such as pathos, logos and ethos.
The article was an enjoyment to read. It provides an insider's view of what goes on in the mortuary, where not many people can access. It deals with a subject which people do not usually seek information on but are nonetheless intrigued by. The style lessens the formality of the subject, which makes it less scary to deal with. The descriptive language is effectively used. The expression of the author's feeling and thoughts encourages empathy from the reader with the author.
“Skeletons in the Closet”, written by Clara Spotted Elk, is a well-built argument, but it can be enhanced to become immensely effective. Firstly, Elk’s position is effective in obtaining her purpose and connecting her audience to it, because she includes a broad scope and background of the problem in the first few paragraphs. She describes the amount of Indian skeletons preserved and contained by American museums, through the use of data and statistics. For instance, Elk states: “we found that 18,500 Indian remains…are unceremoniously stored in the Smithsonian’s nooks and crannies” (13-15). By using this data, the background of the argument is illustrated to assist the audience in understanding her argument. Now, by knowing this statistic, readers can connect with Elk and her assertion, since we realize that there are plenty of skeletons that
In the book Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer wrote about Christopher McCandless, a nature lover in search for independence, in a mysterious and hopeful experience. Even though Krakauer tells us McCandless was going to die from the beginning, he still gave him a chance for survival. As a reader I wanted McCandless to survive. In Into the Wild, Krakauer gave McCandless a unique perspective. He was a smart and unique person that wanted to be completely free from society. Krakauer included comments from people that said McCandless was crazy, and his death was his own mistake. However, Krakauer is able to make him seem like a brave person. The connections between other hikers and himself helped in the explanation of McCandless’s rational actions. Krakauer is able to make McCandless look like a normal person, but unique from this generation. In order for Krakauer to make Christopher McCandless not look like a crazy person, but a special person, I will analyze the persuading style that Krakauer used in Into the Wild that made us believe McCandless was a regular young adult.
“In most human society's death is an extremely important cultural and social phenomenon, sometimes more important than birth” (Ohnuki-Tierney, Angrosino, & Daar et al. 1994). In the United States of America, when a body dies it is cherished, mourned over, and given respect by the ones that knew the person. It is sent to the morgue and from there the family decides how the body should be buried or cremated based on...
Pollan’s article provides a solid base to the conversation, defining what to do in order to eat healthy. Holding this concept of eating healthy, Joe Pinsker in “Why So Many Rich Kids Come to Enjoy the Taste of Healthier Foods” enters into the conversation and questions the connection of difference in families’ income and how healthy children eat (129-132). He argues that how much families earn largely affect how healthy children eat — income is one of the most important factors preventing people from eating healthy (129-132). In his article, Pinsker utilizes a study done by Caitlin Daniel to illustrate that level of income does affect children’s diet (130). In Daniel’s research, among 75 Boston-area parents, those rich families value children’s healthy diet more than food wasted when children refused to accept those healthier but
In Sandy Hingston’s “The death of the funeral business”, the story motivates people into moving into different sets of values or beliefs that weren’t acquainted in their previous ideas. I feel the understanding of change in culture is motivating the author. The time that she is living a time and era in which we as the people search for many ways to have freedom. This includes freedom of choice from the restraints of our own minds such as culture and beliefs we are so accustomed to. Hingston is seeing as a change on how we perceive our body because of the time and era it occurs in. One of the the biggest change in history is the since 1884 which introduced the use cremation. This later rose in popularity overtime in which it finally reached
The mind is a very powerful tool when it is exploited to think about situations out of the ordinary. Describing in vivid detail the conditions of one after his, her, or its death associates the mind to a world that is filled with horrific elements of a dark nature.
The movie trailer “Rio 2”, shows a great deal of pathos, ethos, and logos. These rhetorical appeals are hidden throughout the movie trailer; however, they can be recognized if paying attention to the details and montage of the video. I am attracted to this type of movies due to the positive life messages and the innocent, but funny personifications from the characters; therefore, the following rhetorical analysis will give a brief explanation of the scenes, point out the characteristics of persuasive appeals and how people can be easily persuaded by using this technique, and my own interpretation of the message presented in the trailer.
"Taboos and Social Stigma - Rituals, Body, Life, History, Time, Person, Human, Traditional Views of Death Give Way to New Perceptions." Encyclopedia of Death and Dying. Web. 31 Jan. 2011. .
Introduction: Mary Roach introduces herself ass a person who has her own perspective of death about cadavers. She explains the benefits of cadavers and why they could be used for scientific improvements. She acknowledges the negative perspectives of this ideology.
She opens up her essay by saying “How surprised [Yorick] would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged, and neatly dressed transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.”(Mitford) Funerals are meant to protect people from seeing what kind of toll death has on their loved one; to remove the scars of being human. Kubler-Ross touches on this when she says “The more we are making advancements in science, the more we seem to fear and deny the reality of death. How is this possible? We use euphemisms, we make the dead look as if they were asleep” (Kubler-Ross) which connects to her opinion that death is feared and people take responsibility when a loved one dies, even if they had no impact on their death. The eradication of the sense of death is the key reason why the deceased are embalmed. Clifton Bryant discusses that the reason why people want to have their dead embalmed is because of “death anxiety”, that it is the collective phrase for all the different and complex fears of death. He later states that death anxiety is why we tend to have “death denial” and why we tend to avoid it wholly. “Likewise, the use of metaphors or euphemisms that serve to soften the harshness of death (e.g., passed away, deceased, expired) clearly represents a culturally approved attempt to deny or camouflage death's impact on our daily lives.”(Bryant) This reflects well on the point Mitford makes, when she says “[The funeral director] put on a well-oiled performance in which the concept of death played no part whatsoever” (Mitford) Kubler-Ross feels that death being ever increasingly more taboo the more
The Letter from Birmingham Jail was written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April of 1963. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of several civil rights activists who were arrested in Birmingham Alabama, after protesting against racial injustices in Alabama. Dr. King wrote this letter in response to a statement titled A Call for Unity, which was published on Good Friday by eight of his fellow clergymen from Alabama. Dr. King uses his letter to eloquently refute the article. In the letter dr. king uses many vivid logos, ethos, and pathos to get his point across. Dr. King writes things in his letter that if any other person even dared to write the people would consider them crazy.
Imagine yourself as a mortician, certified as an embalmer, retort operator, funeral director, and a funeral cosmetologist. You get a call late at night, there’s been a terrible accident and someone has died. You arrive at the hospital and are directed to a small room where the body of the deceased is being held. There’s blood all over the sheets as the doctor and coronary assistant zip up the body bag and inform you the body was badly mangled in a car accident, which is going to make reconstructing the deceased very difficult. Your assistant puts the body on the stretcher and loads it into the hearse while you talk to the wife of the deceased man. She tells you they plan to have a funeral so you give her your card and a reassuring word before leaving the hospital and driving back to the funeral home. Now your job begins, not only will you have to reconstruct this man’s disfigured body, but you must meet with the family, discuss funeral arrangements, and deal with the family’s emotional trauma that comes with losing a loved one. Although working in the funeral business can be emotionally draining, it’s a satisfying feeling to see mourning families able to say goodbye to their loved ones. Despite the fact that working so closely with the deceased can be chilling, Mortuary science can be a thrilling field to work in.
I was very excited to take Death and Dying as a college level course. Firstly, because I have always had a huge interest in death, but it coincides with a fear surrounding it. I love the opportunity to write this paper because I can delve into my own experiences and beliefs around death and dying and perhaps really establish a clear personal perspective and how I can relate to others in a professional setting.