Analysis Of Body Ritual Among The Nacirema By Horace Miner

Horace Miner, the author of “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”, used very interesting and descriptive choice of words to describe the routines that modern Americans go through from an outsider point of view. He gives different terms to describe mundane routines, like brushing your teeth, and exaggerate the details as something that is bizarre. Some rituals Miner described as illogical because there was a low rate of success in what they are trying to achieve. This reveals that what determines something to be socially acceptable is not through logic, but only though the popularity of the community. One of the rituals that Miner described as illogical but everyone still do the ritual was the fact that the people kept going to the “holy-mouth-man”, or also known as the dentist, even if their teeth are still decaying. Miner described the holy-mouth-man as torturing and unbelievable because the holy-mouth-man drills holes to put in some “magical” substances that somehow stops decaying of the teeth. Miner said that the clients come to the holy-mouth-man to, “to arrest decay and to draw friends.” (Miner) But then Miner continued to say that, “The extremely sacred and traditional character of the rite is evident in the fact that the natives return to the hold-mouth-men year after year, despite the fact that their teeth continue to

The audience that believed what Miner said became the prisoners that are in the cave. They accepted the story as true without thinking of what the story is trying to reveal. While as the audience that caught Nacirema is American backwards, they were the prisoner who was set free of the cave. Those people were able to realize that the article is just the generic routines that modern American citizens go through, viewed from an outsider point of