Behind The Formaldehyde Curtain Analysis

In the essay “On the Fear of Death” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross focuses on dying and the effects it has on children as well as those who are dying, while in Jessica Mitford’s “Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain” focuses more on the after fact when the deceased is being prepared of their last appearance. Both authors, point out that the current attitude toward death is to simply cover it up. A successful funeral is when the deceased looks “Lyf Lyk” in Mitford’s Essay, but in Kubler-Ross’ it is dying at a peace with oneself, no IVs attached. Both authors feel that the current views of death is dehumanizing. Mitford points this out with the allusion that the funeral parlors are a theatrical play, while Kubler-Ross comments “I think there are many reasons

for the flight away from facing death calmly. One of the most important facts is that dying nowadays is more gruesome in many ways, namely, more lonely, mechanical, and dehumanized; at times it is even difficult to determine technically when the time of death has occurred.”(Kubler-Ross)
The reason it has been mechanized is, everyone is assumed that they want to live. The fear of death makes one want to hear nor see any part of it, unless it is strictly necessary. Children are the most influenced by this attitude towards death. The uncomfortable feeling of grief wants to be eradicated by the parents, although it leaves more questions and bad feelings than being told the truth. Instead of taking the full dose of grief they are fed a small trickle of lies until the parents are incapable of holding back the truth any longer. Kubler-Ross explains that when a farmer was on his death bed everyone knew even the children exactly what was happening. The farmer planned his death, took care of his estate and belongings, and spoke to his family to carry on his legacy. Today the whole family would think the farmer went mad if he wanted to die peacefully at home. Wanting to die?! That’s preposterous! In fact, the farmer didn’t want to die, but there was little hope for him surviving. Instead of dragging it out he took care of his death with dignity and peace of mind. Everyone knew what he hoped for and what the future was going to be like. With the current attitude towards death, the farmer would be rushed to the emergency room. He would go from a familiar place with comforting people and surroundings to a sterile hospital with plenty of people checking more on the machines that keep him alive than himself. His children would be told that dad has gone for a long vacation to avoid the uncomfortable conversation that their dad has died.
The way children are treated during grieving is discussed in depth in Joy Johnson’s book “Helping Children Deal with Death and Grief”. He discusses that it is a natural to want to protect someone from the hurtful feeling of a loved one dying. Denying them the truth shows that it is okay to hide emotions and teaches them to suppress them. Ironically death is a cornerstone in one’s life. It changes our views drastically when we experience it firsthand. Johnson furthers this when he says “We have found that once we begin to talk about death, others begin to share their experiences. They are rich, enlightening life events filled with learning and hope. We don't want to miss them.”(Johnson) Death as hurtful as it is, opens our eyes to what truly is lost and how life should be cherished. The most prominent feeling one has when a loved one passes away is regret that they didn’t spend more time with them. Kubler-Ross feels children should not be excluded from this insight even if they are more vulnerable.
Mitford, on the other hand, approaches death with a more satirical sense in which she compares the funeral to an expensive theater, and how the whole process of getting a corpse “funeral ready” is commercialized and dehumanizing.

She opens up her essay by saying “How surprised [Yorick] 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.”(Mitford) Funerals are meant to protect people from seeing what kind of toll death has on their loved one; to remove the scars of being human. Kubler-Ross touches on this when she says “The more we are making advancements in science, the more we seem to fear and deny the reality of death. How is this possible? We use euphemisms, we make the dead look as if they were asleep” (Kubler-Ross) which connects to her opinion that death is feared and people take responsibility when a loved one dies, even if they had no impact on their death. The eradication of the sense of death is the key reason why the deceased are embalmed. Clifton Bryant discusses that the reason why people want to have their dead embalmed is because of “death anxiety”, that it is the collective phrase for all the different and complex fears of death. He later states that death anxiety is why we tend to have “death denial” and why we tend to avoid it wholly. “Likewise, the use of metaphors or euphemisms that serve to soften the harshness of death (e.g., passed away, deceased, expired) clearly represents a culturally approved attempt to deny or camouflage death's impact on our daily lives.”(Bryant) This reflects well on the point Mitford makes, when she says “[The funeral director] put on a well-oiled performance in which the concept of death played no part whatsoever” (Mitford) Kubler-Ross feels that death being ever increasingly more taboo the more

“death anxiety” we have and the harder it is to deal with those emotions.
Kubler-Ross focused more on dying in her essay, while Mitford broke down the whole funeral process. Kubler-Ross thought the taboo of death makes harder for people to cope with it affecting kids the most. Comparatively, Mitford finds the funeral to be a pitiful effort of trying to cover up the fact of death. Although, the two authors shared views on how dehumanizing death and dying has become, and how it stems from the fear of death or as Bryant puts it “death anxiety”.