The Importance Of Respect For The Dead

At some point in our lives, we all come to realize that death is a part of life. Cultural diversity provides a wide variety of lifestyles and traditions for each of the unique groups of people in our world. Within these different cultures, the rituals associated with death and burial can also be uniquely diverse. Many consider ritualistic traditions that differ from their own to be somewhat strange and often perceive them as unnatural. A prime example would be the burial rituals of the Native American people.

After reading, The Embalming of Mr. Jones by Jessica Mitford, I was in shock about the whole process that happens hour after death. Previously, when I heard about embalming I thought they basically just cleaned the body up and dressed them up for the casket showing, but now that I know what actually happens I’m a little grossed out. The body shouldn’t be changed so much because you want to see them as you last remember not reconstructed due to the embalming. While the bodies are deceased, I can't help but wonder if they are feeling all of this happening. I feel bad for Mr. Jones and others who have been through the process. I can’t even imagine what it is like for the embalmer, and how they can go through with it.

In the essay “The Embalming of Mr. Jones,” (1963), Jessica Mitford is describing a procedure of embalming of a corpse. She writes that people pay a ton of money each year, but “not one in ten thousand has any idea of what actually takes place,” and it is extremely hard to find books and any information about this subject. She assumes that it must be a reason for such secrecy, and may be if people knew more about this procedure, they would not want this service after their death.

The tone of Mitford’s essay “Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain” reflects her disapproval of the embalming process. To illustrate, she uses harrowing words like “subjected” and “gruesomeness” to convey a message of disgust and unease within the readers. It is good she wrote her essay in a simple and satiric way, so that it is very easy for the common man to read and comprehend it, while the comedy and horrible detail leaves the terrible imagery of the embalming procedures in one’s mind long after reading. Texts like this one, and ones similar to it are very important as society evolves. It would seem that many people would read this and it would greatly influence whether they would want their family members embalmed or even what they would desire

In the novel The Dead, Gabriel Conroy, who is the nephew of Julia and Kate Morkan, is the main character of the story. One night he and his wife attended a party, which was given by his two aunts, and there were many other members in the party. The story revolves around their life and memories.Gabriel Conroy felt a blur between his soul and the dead. Some people died, but they are still alive because they have true love. Some people are alive, but they are still dead because they never love.I like the story for three reasons.

Every individual experiences the act of death, and most persons experience the death of someone they know of. Whether family, kin, or someone infamous, the living deal with the process of dying. Anthropology seeks to understand the universal process of death ritual and how different cultures deal with death differently. An anthropologist can extract social values of a given culture, past or present, from how death ceremony is practiced. Such values could be regarding political hierarchy or an individual’s status in a society, and about a culture’s spiritual or religious faith. By exploring death ceremony in ancient Egypt, contemporary Hindu death practice in India, and current North American funerary rites, it can be illustrated that

After reading Stiff, it was surprising to discover that there are so many different ways that cadavers can be used. For example, cadavers are used to see the different stages of decomposition, as test dummies, as compost, and as art. Until I read this book, I thought that you were simply buried or cremated when you die. Further, I

The Body Farm didn’t receive its first body until 1981 and there were only two kinds of body that were send to this farm. The two kinds of bodies sent here to the body farm were ones used for medical research and others which were used to help solve crimes. The research at the Body Farm increases scientific understanding of what happens to human bodies after they die. The knowledge learned from the research has been used in courts today to convict the guilty criminal in many of the cases. The Body Farm helps with many things today that people wouldnt

In this paper, we will discuss the different death rituals performed in different cultures. We view death rituals from Native Americans, Africans, those of the Chinese decent, and endocannibalism from the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea. Death is universal to all people in every culture. Responses to how one deals with death and dying differ greatly. Death rituals are usually based on beliefs. This can come from religion, history, language, and art.

In the case study, Death, Duty, and Dignity, there are several central characters ' experiences to consider including Theresa, Ted, Peter and Faith, as well as Mary. Theresa went to conferences and wrote papers around 1994 when Oregon was having a debate on whether or not to pass a Death with Dignity Act. At the time, Theresa spoke against physician-assisted suicide because she felt that this form of help is allowing people to do what they want when it is time to die. This is not anything that Catholics view. Eventually her father, Ted, utilized physician-assisted suicide. He contacted her saying that he had grade IV glioblastoma multiforme, a deadly form of brain cancer. Ted had brain surgery to remove the tumor and had radiotherapy to increase his chance of survival. Well, unfortunately he began to have severe headaches and doctors told him that he had six months or less to live. Ted wanted their family physician to assist him in speeding up the process of his death because he did not want to go through the pain and forget who his family was. Theresa has a duty to support her father Shortly after this, Theresa was asked to present on this issue of physican assisted suicide at the conference of Death, Duty, and Dignity.

Dead?" AlterNet. In this article, Frankie Colmane looks into how dead bodies are treated in the United State even after Mitford's expose of the funeral industry was published. The article takes both a philosophical and scientific issue with the procedure of embalming sighting proven negative effects to human beings and the environment. Colmane shows that even though people are aware of the malfeasance and misappropriations of the funeral industry following pieces like Mitford's, very little has changed. Therefore problems that have been discussed in earlier works should not be forgotten. Rather they should be continually brought up until the issue is solved. During the 1800s, embalming became common practice because the dead family member would lie in state within the home for a period of days or weeks until it would be buried (Colmane 2010). The article shows the duplicity such as when "funeral directors were arguing forcefully against charges that their mediation between the living and the dead translated into social obstruction that barred the stricken from facing death with maturity, realism, and honest" (page 2). This article will be used to illustrate that things have not changed with funereal practices despite the publication of Mitford's essay.

While there are still people who do not believe in the use of cadavers or have no interest in becoming one (which is completely fine as it is simply a matter of opinion), Mary Roach shines light on all the positive impacts that cadavers can have on human life today. From bettering our safety by being used in studies for impact tests, to furthering scientific, medical and forensics research, cadavers are a necessity to our well-being and

No one can escape death. It’s one of so few unavoidable certainties in our lives and has held an important position in every human culture since time immemorial. Of course, this position has is different from culture to culture, and shifts over time. This is particularly evident in western culture. The shift is discussed at length in two essays: “Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain” by Jessica Mitford, and ‘The Fear of Dying’ by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Both explore different aspects of these themes – Mitford’s essay being deconstruction of a the uniquely North American process of embalming, and Kübler-Ross’ being an indictment of the clinical depersonalization of contemporary western attitudes toward death. Each utilize many different tools as writers, such as rhetorical modes. Rhetorical modes they share are exemplification, description, and compare-and-contrast.

“One of the obligations for nursing staff and everyone is to take care of the dead body whose perfused organs are being maintained by machines”, a panelist interjected. Many hospitals have policies whereby if one is hired by the hospital and has a personal, moral, or religious objection to certain things, then every effort will be made for someone else to participate – termination of pregnancy serves as an example, he continued. Furthermore, he emphasized that there does not have to be a conscientious objection on the part of the doctors or nurses based on spiritual, philosophical, or religious grounds; it’s solely based on not being required to give treatments that one believes are futile. As another member put it succinctly, “You can recuse yourself from performing such duties”. Moreover, the idea of futility is a vague idea, mentioned a panelist; he stressed that in this particular instance, regarding the woman’s brain-death state, this is totally futile. The whole idea behind a religious exemption is, as he put it: “You are not dead based on spiritual grounds. The family believes that it is not actual death – it is not cardiopulmonary death”. In addition, the doctor emphasized that many health practitioners also hold the same religious ideals and would conclude that the person is not dead.

During the times of the Ancient Romans, Epicureans and Stoics it was understood that death and the disposal of the body were vitally important to all beliefs, these views on death also display the contrasting portrayals of each ideology as to how the deceased were handled and the influential theories revolving around death.