Behind The Formaldehyde Curtain Analysis

What make us human, are we more than just biological machines? Despite the fact that we’ve developed the complexity to think, decide and create, we are still prone to having many animalistic characteristics, the most prominent being our desire to live. Although death has been around since the beginning of existence it is interesting how we haven’t overcome its phycological and emotional affect on one another. In the essays On the fear of death by Kubler Ross and Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain by Jessica Mitford both writers share their attitudes towards the acceptance and denial of death. Their influences are based on recent advancements of medicine and technology. By analyzing their writings we can learn how humans deal with death and hopefully bring forth how something so ambiguous …show more content…
This is evidence of societal influences that shape the way we view death, suggesting that is better to “transform a common corpse into a beautiful Memory Picture”(Mitford,128) then to face the truth of death and its causes . In addition Mitford also argues that
“In an era when huge television audiences watch surgical operations in the comfort of their own living rooms, when, thanks to the animated cartoon, the geography of the digestive system….is national past time, the secrecy surrounding embalming can, surely, hardly be attributed to the inherent gruesomeness of the subject. ”(Mitford,129).
Given that most people nowadays are desensitised to general goriness due to modern day television (increasingly realistic drama surgery and cartoon guts, ect.) Mitford discovers that the docility towards embalming is not rooted from its grotesque nature but rather the involvement of death. Ultimately, society has made it so we are able to handle blood and gore but our fear of death has drew a line, a border we do not pass and one we leave