HW 51

Book: Curtains by Tom Jokinen


Precis:
Everyone has a role to play in our society when it comes to death. They can't act too sad because grief is a sign of weakness in society. We also have an obsession with happiness and entertainment a sad person doesn't fit the norm and grief is not entertaining at all. So we feel bad about grieving and being depressed about death. We do anything we can to change the death process into something it's not to ease the grief.

Quotes:

"We treat mourning as a weakness, a self-indulgence, and that a modern widow would no more throw herself on the casket than she would take off her clothes or pee in public."

"In the end, a simple cremation, advertised at $695, wound up costing the family $2,100 with province of Manitoba's blessing."

"Without some system of defence we'd be paralyzed with overwhelming terror over the fact that we're 'breathing,defecating pieces of meat, no more important or durable than a lizard or a potato,' he says. So what we did, cleverly and quite unconsciously was to collaborate in the construction of culture to give us a sense that we live in a world that has meaning, a world with art and industry and borders and trade rules and quality daytime talk-television, all earthly distractions from the nasty fact parked in our heads we are doomed."


Analysis:
I found this part of the book even more interesting because it goes more into the society and reasons for the ways we go about when dealing with the dead. It explains how society shapes us to feel about death and also mentions religion and how we make ourselves believe that death is not really the end and that the dead person is going to a better place. I think it's interesting that we try to fantasize in our ways of dealing with death. We do things to block out the pain and find ways not to show our sadness. I also found a bunch of things sad like how the funeral services seem to be crooked and trying to just make as much money off the people who are suffering already from losing someone. Also things like people wanting to have light "pure" ashes, whatever that means... It shouldn't matter what color the persons ashes are! It just seems ridiculous and makes me feel like people are just trying to create this fantasy in their head. It makes me wonder how can we deal with death in a more genuine way? Interesting book...