Homework 50- First third of COTD book

The American Way of Death Revisited- Jessica Mitford
Precis:
I chose to begin "The American Way of Death Revisited" with a conference full of funeral directors and other influential people in the business of death. Here I gave a speech, which had mixed reactions from the audience. This was to introduce the reader to business world of death, where the big idea is to create as much profit as possible. 
  To build off of this idea I explained how funeral directors are exploiting customers time constraints and vulnerability by fabricating laws about how a body must be treated after death. Along with this I explained how funeral directors also have a variety of business strategies to draw people into spending the most money possible. An example I used was a complicated arrangement of caskets that funeral directors use to steer the customer towards the more expensive models. Among other strategies funeral directors and morticians use, one that I find disgusting, when morticians and funeral directors speak with customers, they speak to evoke strong emotions, and then they start to manipulate after they made the person more vulnerable. 
   I then went on to discuss what happens to the body itself. Going into detail about the embalming process and how truly disgusting it is. I discussed how there are companies that create specialized clothes for the dead, down to the underwear. These clothes are very expensive because "they are the best fit for the dead." The main idea for this section of my book is that the process of caring for the dead is very expensive, but it doesn't have to be. 


Notable quotes:
"I was familiar with the story but if you read further, it seems he didn't stay there all that long. I mean he was up and out in three days." (Mitford,37)
"How true, once the blood is removed, chances of live burial are indeed remote" (Mitford, 46)
"If viewing is lost, then the body itself will not be central to the funeral. If the body is taken out of the funeral, then what does the funeral director have to sell?” (Mitford, 63)


Analysis:
Jessica Mitford wrote this book very well because it's a non-fiction book that's dropping a lot of heavy facts on you, but at the same time she makes it funny. She quotes funeral directors to show how ridiculous they are, she makes a couple of funny comparisons, basically she makes the book interesting to read. But she isn't losing the affect that the book is supposed to have because she still shows how it's a very greedy business designed to capitalize on the vulnerable. And it really is. Everything is overpriced, and they try to get you to buy the more expensive products by using guilt and good business strategies. A part I found very interesting was how the caskets in the showroom are arranged. Unless the person is being really stubborn about the price, basically a funeral director can walk a customer one way and get a customer to spend anothe couple of hundred dollars. Which isn't fair, especially because she presents that average funeral costs are $7,800. So in the big picture that two or three hundred dollars can make a difference. Everything that she's saying in this doesn't even se that biased because what they're doing is so wrong. It's just not a good situation for the person who has to pay for a funeral but doesn't have $10,000 just laying around.