Stephanie Grusy

Death and Dying

Book Review

March 28, 2002

The American Way of Death Revisited: A Book That Will Not Soon ‘Pass’

Jessica Mitford’s first book entitled The American Way Of Death was first published in 1963. Mitford discussed, at length, the funeral ritual and industry in the United States. The book takes a critical look at funeral practices and the people involved in funerary services. Her second edition gives updates to each chapter. However, even with pressure from Mitford’s original edition to change the funerary business, the funeral industry and its ‘professionals’ have changed little since the first book’s publication.

Mitford began her study when her husband became involved in a non-profit organization that wished to supply people with very cheap funerals. This was in contrast to the funerals that were supplied by most funeral homes across the nation. Mitford, along with most Americans, found that the funeral had become extremely expensive. The price of a funeral led Mitford to investigate the funerary service on a whole, and her findings disprove many myths that many people have become to believe about the funeral.

The first myth that Mitford tackles deals with the transaction between the funeral director and their client. While Mitford continually notes that funeral ‘directors’ would love to be regarded as ethical people of the community who have a difficult job, it seems that undertakers are not always as honest and good intentioned as they would like to be. People in the funerary business are still business people trying to make a profit. Funeral directors sale such things as coffins/caskets and embalming, and they sale them at a very high price. Mitford’s studies of funeral directors over the past thirty years have found that funeral directors are most concerned about profit. She sights that funerary magazines indicate the type of business that undertakers are involved in- one of profit. These magazines continually sight how to make the most money from a grieving customer. The displaying of caskets has been calculated to a fine art in order to sale the most expensive casket. The average funeral director has been found to lie or shy away from telling the full truth about laws regarding funerary practices. It is not the law to embalm a body, but is quite a moneymaker for a funeral director to embalm a body. It is also not the law to be cremated in casket. Laws are also changing, laws giving people the right to care for the dead within their own homes and completely bypass the funeral industry.

Mitford does an excellent job in discussing the role of the funeral and funeral director. The American funeral that one sees today is not grounded in years and years of tradition. The practices surrounding funerals today began in the twentieth century. Death used to be experienced in the home. Once someone had died, a simple funeral service, done either in the home or the church, was performed by a clergy member. The undertaker had little to do with the arrangement of the funeral. In these services the coffin was closed and little attention was given to the corpse. The job of the undertaker was usually to supply the coffin, maybe embalm the body, and see to the digging of the grave or the making of the tombstone. The undertaker played a very small part in the funeral process. They were not funeral directors. A funeral did not take place in the undertaker’s place of business, and the body was not brought to the undertaker. The undertaker was never a grief therapist because they do not have the training to provide counseling. Mitford compares this to the recent funerary industry that has arisen. Today funerals are an elaborate event. Once a person dies, the body is usually taken to a funeral home/chapel. Here the body is embalmed.

Mitford explains the embalming process in detail, which was one of the reasons why the first addition had trouble finding a publisher. Mitford’s critique of embalming is basically that it is unnecessary. Embalming is unpredictable and usually does not keep a body preserved longer than the funeral. However, some might say that embalming only needs to last until the casket is closed. This leads Mitford to question why we have open-casket funerals. Most clergy agree that the casket should be closed during funeral, and that the funerary industry had focused too much on the corpse. Mitford also works to dispel the belief that in order to work through the grieving process, that one must see the dead body for the last time. It might be beneficial to see the body, but does the body need to be embalmed, painted, and laid out in five thousand dollar ‘casket’ lined in pink satin? Mitford consistently questions embalming and the need for an open casket-funeral. Perhaps she discusses these two funeral practices the most because these are the two practices that most Americans find necessary. Not embalming a body does not pose a health problem, although most morticians will tell you that it does. Viewing the corpse in a coffin usually does not affect the grieving process one-way or the other. There is no evidence that the grief process is affected by the viewing of the corpse.

It seems that morticians have made a nice niche for themselves in society. Their industry has successfully convinced America that a funeral must be elaborate, which equals expensive, to commemorate the dead. Conspicuous consumption has entered into the funeral ritual. They have made themselves the caregivers to the dead. It has become weird to take care of your dead family member in your own home. Death has been brought to the funeral parlor. Today, many ‘viewings’ are done in funeral homes. This is convenient for funeral directors and helps business when others see the funeral director’s fine establishment. Funeral directors have even given themselves a title that leaves the stigma of undertaker or even mortician behind. The funerary service has changed many words to get rid of the stigma associated with them. Funeral directors have even begun to charge for the grief counseling they provide the family. Mitford questions when undertakers became spiritual people with qualifications to handle the grieving process. She reminds her reader, the funeral directors are business people, and that their market is death.

When I was looking to interview funeral directors, I called about fifteen different funeral homes before the funeral director, Mr. Chris Tapia, agreed to talk to me. I was surprised that so many people refused to talk to a student who just wanted to learn about a death professional. I was also surprised that when I did interview Mr. Tapia that he was very hesitant to be filmed. One of my last questions, which I did not film, led Mr. Tapia to discuss his relationship with clergy members and doctors. He commented on how he felt that they looked down on funeral directors. He also commented on how funeral directors had to be very sensitive to families, and that he usually sat and prayed with families. I left the interview feeling sorry for people in his profession, because I believed that funeral directors had a hard job that was stigmatized. However, The American Way Of Death Revisited has led me to question my reaction to my interview. I now question the funeral, a ritual based on sales, and with its cornerstone of embalming. The funeral director’s market takes advantage of grieving families that are in a time crunch, and that do not question or research the price and services that they are given by a funeral home.

The ‘revisited’ edition of Jessica Mitford’s book is interesting because the now popular practice of cremation is discussed. Mitford cites how the funeral industry had been able to profit off cremation, even though it is an extremely inexpensive process. Mitford is also able to discuss the changing price of funerals, laws regulating the funeral industry, the NFDA, non-profit organizations providing inexpensive funeral services, and monopolies in the funeral business. It seems that the McDonaldization of the funeral industry has begun. Stewart Enterprises, SCI, has begun to buy out local funeral homes, and standardize them. However, many people do not know of this monopoly because the funeral home does not take the name of SCI. The price of a funeral has increased three times faster than the cost of living, even with pressure from the public to curb funeral prices.

However, America has bought into the new funeral ritual. It does seem weird that a person would take care of a dead family member in their own home, and drive the body to the cemetery in their own car. It seems like a family would be cheating the deceased if they did not have a memorial service and funeral. It will be hard to break Americans of the ritual that they have become accustomed too. Yet, Mitford does bring to light, the unethical practices of the funeral industry.

It does not seem unfair to ask for reasonable prices in funeral costs, to have the truth presented to you, and to be allowed to pick and choose the services that you would like a funeral director to provide. In reading this book, I now hope to make rational decisions when dealing with funeral arrangements for family members. I will also bear in mind what is important, and question if worshipping a corpse is what is truly needed in the grieving process.