Daniel Richardson
Professor Jesse Miller
ENG 104, H-4
25 October 2017
“The American Way of Death Revisited”
“The American Way of Death Revisited”, is a short piece written by Jessica Mitford. Mitford’s goal in writing this piece is to expose the funeral industry for taking advantage of grieving families. Mitford notes on page 42, that Preferred Funeral Directors International, an organization of private funeral directors, advertise their funerals as including “an additional forty hours of service required by members of other local allied professions, including the work of the cemeteries, newspapers, and of course, the most important of all, the service of your clergyman. These some 20 hours of labor are the basic value on which the cost of funeral rests.” However, as Mitford points out, a clergy service lasts “no more than 15 minutes” and are not paid for by the funeral director. The funeral director does not foot the bill for the closing of the grave either.
One of the heaviest expenses on a funeral bill, can be the embalmment process. Yet as Mitford again points out “[Sic] no law requires embalming, no religious doctrine commends it, nor is it dictated by considerations of health, sanitation, or even personal daintiness. In no part of the world but in North America is it widely used.” If it’s not required, how come it is such a common practice? Mitford supplies us an answer on pg. 44 when she reveals that per Federal Trade Commission standards, permission is only required for the process of embalming “only if a change is made to the procedure”. Embalming the American dead was made popular only by the funeral homes as a marketing scheme. Mitford paints a picture of this, by including the passage from the English-woman, detailing her sheer horror of knowing that American funerals are open-casket and are presented for viewing in make-up, realizing “Then and there I decided that I could never face another American funeral—even dead.” This firsthand account of the horror of a foreigner is eye-opening to me. As an American, I thought embalmment a common practice worldwide. Upon hearing this testimony, I question not only the origins, but the value of embalmment as a whole.