ipl-logo

Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers

1784 Words8 Pages

Organ donations from one donor can save up to eight lives, and also change the lives of more than fifty people (“Facts About Organ Donation”). What is simply baffling about this statistic is the fact that most people usually don’t consider that something like organ donation could be that impactful. However, in Mary Roach’s Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, she explores the relevance of this process, as well as many other topics associated with the scientific study of cadavers. The purpose that Roach is trying to convey in this novel is to persuade the audience to think about the impact cadavers have had in history, as well as in the world today, and to consider the options she provides as to what can be done with the human body after …show more content…

Yet when looking over the entirety of it, it seems that Roach uses sequential structure to manipulate the readers into possibly donating their bodies to science by giving a clear-cut explanation of how the organ extraction procedure works. This is effective because when trying to persuade a person into doing something that requires a large amount of commitment, people usually want to know exactly what they're getting into-- no ambiguity, no bias, and nothing misleading. The beginning of the excerpt contains graphic imagery, some of which is shown through similes, depicting the removal of cadaver H’s internal organs in order to donate them to living humans who need them. In the section she uses descriptive phrases such as “‘Cherry Sno-Kone’” and the simile “cutting off veins and arteries to be included, like spare sweater buttons” to implant a vivid illustration of the scene in the reader’s mind. By using this imagery, Roach places the reader into the situation she’s recreating in order to make it easier to manipulate or convince them to donate their organs after death. The picture that she creates depicts exactly how the operation commences, but doesn’t describe it in such intense detail that it is perceived as gory or grotesque. Roach presents the operation as it is, which is considered standard procedure to the surgeons and medical personnel

Show More
Related
975 Words | 4 Pages

The first section uses imagery and metaphors to paint the picture of what is going on in the operation room and what the surgeon thinks about performing on a cadaver. She describes the operation process, “The harvesting of H is winding down. The last organs to be taken, the kidneys, are being brought up and separated from the depths of her open torso.” The way the surgery is being described makes it easy for the reader to feel like they are right there witnessing the event with Mary Roach. Although it is a heavy subject, Mary Roach lightens the mood by including a metaphor in the passage.

Read More
624 Words | 3 Pages

Part two of, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, once again submerges the reader in to the world of HeLa cells. This section emphasizes what occurred with Henrietta’s immortal cells after her death. Along with the many medical discoveries made from these miracle cells, part two delves into the physical and emotional abuse that Henrietta’s children were forced to live with after her passing all while struggling financially while their mother’s cells are being sold for millions of dollars. Skloot continues her phenomenal synopsis of the life of Henrietta Lacks and the stories her cells continue to tell. One of the utmost riveting and critical scenes of this section occurs in the first few pages.

Read More
717 Words | 3 Pages

Immortal cells from a woman who never even knew they’d been stolen from her. Henrietta Lacks would change the medical field without even knowing it. Henrietta had a family, a love life, and trials, before her unfortunate death. Henrietta was born on August 1, 1920, in Roanoke Virginia. She was born on the floor of a house that was known as the “The Home-House.”

Read More
912 Words | 4 Pages

They start off by draining his blood and replacing it with fluid depending on the operator’s preference. Then they jab into his abdomen with a “long, hollow needle attached to a tube.” He is also creamed to protect his face from burns, and then covered in a sheet to be unbothered. He’s far from done though. Once all the tissues have become firm and dry is when the real work starts.

Read More
643 Words | 3 Pages

The intended audience of this text is for anyone that plans on donating organs or is recipient of an organ. Schulman is able to appeal to the audience’s emotions by using examples of children, the poor, and the sickly to tug at emotions of the reader to feel for her piece and the issue she

Read More
662 Words | 3 Pages

Jessica Mitford paints a very satirical picture of the world of embalming and uses her many talents to convey her claim that embalming is ridiculous and that people need to know what exactly they’re paying for. Her tone, style, and use of quotations remains solid throughout and never falters or has her readers doubt her

Read More
527 Words | 3 Pages

According to MacKay’s research, in the year 2000, “2,583 Americans died while waiting for a kidney transplant” (120) and according to Matas, “over 6% of waiting candidates die annually” (2007). "With over 60,000 people in line in the United States alone, the average wait for a cadaverous kidney is ten long years" (120). As the reader can see, MacKay is very credible with stating factual statistics in regards to the urgent need of kidney donations and she has Matas to back her up with similar statistics. These statistics show the reader that MacKay’s argument is a strong

Read More
495 Words | 2 Pages

In her 1967 essay Behind The Formaldehyde Curtain, Jessica Mitford utilizes the rhetorical devices of diction and verbal irony to illustrate the unthinkable, little-known truth behind the North American funeral industry and its manipulation of death. Through her choice of diction used when describing the process of an embalmment, Mitford shows us the horrifying and questionable truth behind it, prompting us to question the American funeral industry's ethicality. In the 9th paragraph, Mitford states during an embalmment, the blood of the deceased person "is drained out through the veins”. The word “drained” could’ve easily been replaced with “removed” or “extracted”, both of them being more suitable and correct terms, but the author chose it because it has a negative

Read More
737 Words | 3 Pages

During the previous decades, society’s behavior with regard to organ donation remains reluctant. A survey showed that although people plainly accept to offer their organs for transplantation, when a person dies, his or her relatives often refuse donation. To be able

Read More
105 Words | 1 Pages

Chapter 10 is all about mummification and cannibalism. Roach explores cannibalism within many different cultures. A man from Arabia died after only eating honey for a whole month. After he died, his body was saturated in honey for a year. His remains then worked well to heal wounded limbs.

Read More
577 Words | 3 Pages

More than 120,000 people died last year while waiting for a donor, donation of organs costs nothing (“Why be an Organ Donor”). Becoming an organ donor opens up various options such as organ donation or body donation. Body donation is where the bodies will be given to universities or schools around America, where the students of medicine department will do research on the body to figure out why the organ failed (“Body Donor Program”). The body will not be presented to the public and after it is researched it will be cremated and returned to the family as ash 's (“Body Donor Program”). With that being said some of the organs will be perfect to donate, but some may not meet all the requirements for donation , such as correct blood types, free of sexually transmitted diseases, diabetes, and mental health issues ( "Saving Lives and Giving Hope by Reducing the Organ Waiting

Read More
1768 Words | 8 Pages

Emily Martin wrote the novel The Woman in the Body to show how women are being degraded to metaphors and that their natural processes are deemed a social process. Women are being placed in a medical community where their best interests are being degraded to medical practices. The mother is being separated from her body and being placed secondary to the deliverance of the baby. The woman is being influenced by technology and society in order to conform to the needs and wants of the doctor through their use of power and authority. Max Weber developed the Theory of Domination, which perfectly exemplifies the influence doctors in the medical community have on women.

Read More
1217 Words | 5 Pages

Organ donation is currently the only successful way of saving the lives of patients with organ failure and other diseases that require a new organ altogether. According to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services there is currently 122,566 patients both actively and passively on the transplant list. This number will continue to increase, in fact, every ten minutes another person is added to the list. Unfortunately, twenty-two of these people die while waiting for an organ on a daily basis. Each day, about eighty Americans receive a lifesaving organ transplant.

Read More
733 Words | 3 Pages

The act Donating Organs, either prior to death or after death, is considered by many to be one of the most generous, selfless and worthwhile decisions that one could make. The decision to donate an organ could mean the difference of life or death for a recipient waiting for a donor. Organ donations offer patients new chances at living more productive, healthy and normal lives and offers them back to families, friends and neighborhoods. Despite the increasing number of donor designations in the past few years, a shortage still exists in donors.

Read More
1505 Words | 7 Pages

The use of Cadavers in my view, and from my experience of working and studying in the dissection lab of the National University of Ireland, Galway is one of the best ways human anatomy can both be taught and learnt and I believe is an essential aspect of the study of educational anatomy and should be utilised in the learning of anatomy where possible. The active, hands-on exploration that cadaveric dissections provide, joined with excellent teaching methods makes for an interesting yet challenging method of learning anatomy. My first time entering a dissection room, I felt a sense of captivation and was very much in awe. This fascination stemmed from the fact that I, along with twenty-something other anatomy students would be delving scalpel first into a human corpse, and experiencing the gross anatomy of the human body first hand.

Read More

More about Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers

Related Topics

Open Document