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Rest In Peace Analysis

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We began the first half of Gary Laderman’s book Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America. The main argument in this book is that Mitford was wrong when she said that funerals were not wanted by the general public and that funeral homes push them onto society. Laderman is a strong proponent of funerals because he believes that the survivors of the dead are obsessed with death and the corpse. He describes the main problem as being the physical body. The funeral home resolves this issue by taking the body and embalming so that survivors have a chance to say their goodbyes. “According to morticians, the people wanted to see their dead relations one last time, and they were the only ones qualified …show more content…

The family is forced to make decisions that are out of their knowledge due to lack of experience in the matter. The family is in an uneasy emotional state where they cannot think clearly or rationally. The family is also in an unusual financial state. There is a slight difference in this than what Mitford was explaining, because the family is not overwhelmed with new money, but worried about how they can afford to keep their relative alive on a ventilator or other machines prolonging life. This unique position that the family is in causes them to look towards the professionals, in this case doctors, in order to give them guidance and some sort of peace over their decision. Guilt is also involved with this decision, along with Mitford’s decision. The family in this case feels that once their relative is on the ventilator that they would be killing the relative if they were to remove life support. This is due to the fine line that is still debated among health care professionals about the deciding line when a human being is actually dead or not. Since health care professionals cannot come to a complete consensus on when a person is actual dead, it is difficult for untrained family members to decide that their relative is dead when they see brain activity or involuntary reflexes. Kaufman describes this decision as: “For families, the ‘decision’ to withdraw life-sustaining technology is viewed as a move against hope, against imagining potential recovery, and it is no wonder they hesitate or refuse to make these decisions (Kaufman

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Mitford takes note that “not one in ten thousand has an idea of what actually takes place” (310) and there is so much more beneath the surface of things. Mitford also uses oxymorons such as, “he has done everything in his power to make the funeral a real pleasure for everybody” (314). It’s clear that a funeral isn’t a “pleasure”, it’s an incredibly sad experience (for most people) and it just goes to show the depth Mitford will go to portray her aggressive opinions. As Mitford continues to describe the shocking details about embalming she gets into a routine and systematically gives us disconcerting imagery every other paragraph, such as, a corpse “whose mouth had been sewn together” (312). Mitford’s style is informative and she doesn’t shy away from being brutally open by using unsettling imagery, which once again makes her case even

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