The Formaldehyde Curtain Response and Summary Paper Free Essay Example

The sense of death crushes one’s heart, but what happens behind the scenes before a funeral, the author: Jessica Mitford was the one to bring this dark secret to light. She goes into great detail of the gruesome make over loved one’s go through. This response is a sort of recap on what she said through greater detail. Through reading this I believe some of this is simply to make money off of people deceased family members. I think this is very appalling.

From the moment a person has passed away their body is rushed to the morgue. The body is then cleaned off and laid out.

A sense of urgency comes to mind when this happens following a simple procedure. The body being so quickly taken away just so their process of embalming can begin seems a little heartless to me. Jessica referred to it as “Preparing for surgery” (Mitford 333). Their goal is to create a beautiful picture (Mitford335).

In my eyes this is a case of refurbishing a corpse to normalcy, making the family feel as if their eternal sleep is peaceful. This is a business as stated in the book, “One must wonder at the docility of Americans who each year pays hundreds of millions of dollars for its perpetuation” (Mitford337).

We pay all of this money half the time we don’t even know what goes on behind the scene. There basically telling me that I have no right to my family. Chemicals, incisions, and stuffing are injected into the body as stated before to give a sense of normalcy.

When limbs become decapitated from the body, they remake the limb and by using plaster. The irony of them just trying to make the body seem so real is just extremely amazing. The fact it they know you’ll pay good money so the go above and beyond the call of duty to make you satisfied. I think this why this is more of a non-respectable business for me.

They take heed and notice your morning and then offer price packages. They know your morning and they know you want the funeral to be remember for as long as possible. They have these high dollar prices but yet, the wont even let you see them until there done with there, “makeover”. Now they even trim nails, wash hair, apply makeup, and even tan some people. The author’s point in this essay is quite clear from the start. She talks about the practice of embalming, the hidden secrets behind it, and paints a picture in detail how the process works.

After reading this piece, I was looking deeper at the practice of embalming. If we as people understood what goes on behind the “Formaldehyde Curtain,” they might not accept embalming quite so easily. She creates a clear portrayal of the “funeral industry” in this reading. It is obvious her ideal goal is to share a lot of the common practices of the morgue, and show how barbaric they can be. Jessica’s point is that if more individuals understood these practices, funeral practices might change, and the untold truth as to what goes on behind the funeral parlor’s doors would be revealed for everyone to understand and see.

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