Question by rooch: What is the tone in Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain by Jessica Mitford?

Best answer:

Answer by ari
The tone is subdued, marked by studious indifference and bold disinterested/objective description.
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26 Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain

– an essay by Jessica Mitford

The drama begins to unfold with the arrival of the corpse at
the mortuary. Alas, poor Yorick! How surprised he would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged, and neatly dressed-transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture. This process is known in the trade as embalming and restorative art, and is so universally employed in the United States and Canada that the funeral
director does it routinely, without consulting corpse or kin. He regards as eccentric those few who are hardy enough to suggest that it might be dispensed with. Yet no law requires embalming, no religious doctrine commends it, nor is it dictated by considerations of health, sanitation, or even of personal daintiness. In no part of the world but
in Northern America is it widely used. The purpose of embalming is to make the corpse presentable for viewing in a suitably costly container; and here too the funeral director routinely, without first consulting the family, prepares the body for public display.

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Untouched by human hand, the coffin and the earth are now
united. It is in the function of directing the participants through this maze of gadgetry that the funeral director has assigned to himself his relatively new role of “grief therapist.” He has relieved the family of every detail, he has revamped the corpse to look like a living doll, he has arranged for it to nap for a few days in a slumber room, he has put on a well-oiled performance in which the concept of death played
no part whatsoever-unless it was inconsiderately mentioned by the clergyman who conducted the religious service. He has done everything in his power to make the funeral a real pleasure for everybody concerned.

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TEDxFSU – Sally Karioth – Compassion Energy as a Way to Find Joy in What You Do – About the Talker: Dr. Sally Karioth Professor of Nursing College of Nursing, The Florida State University Some speakers make you cry, some speakers make you laugh and some speakers make you look at life differently. Dr. Karioth is a special speaker as she can make you do all three. Things she has learned as a nurse, teacher, talk show hostess and grief therapist. Dr. Karioth is a graduate of the Green Bay Bellin School of Nursing and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has gone on to earn two Masters degrees and a PhD. Dr. Karioth has been on the faculty of FSU for 40 years and has taught over 35000 students including being the mentor of Myron Rolle during his quest in obtaining a Rhodes Scholarship. She has won local state and national awards including at FSU an undergraduate teaching award and the Ross Oglesby award. She has been a contributor to the Chicken Soup book series and her own book called “If You Want to Know if You’re Dying Ask the Cleaning Lady” has sold over 85000 copies. Active in trauma work she was one of the first people to go to the Pentagon following 911. Dr. Karioth says that every day you should have at least one exquisite moment; a theme she emphasizes on her speaking tours that cover over 25000 miles worldwide each year. Since 1972 she has taught summers at the FSU campus in London and been a regular guest lecturer in the palliative care curriculum at the University of Gjovik in Gjovik, Norway. Her speeches are filled with …

 

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Filed under: grief therapist

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