Book Part II

Curtains

By Tom Jokinen

Précis

Dead people are covered from others, discretely escorted, and stay isolated away. The raw look of death is so feared that it becomes unpresentable to the public. And is therefore is covered, and wrapped.

Hospitals enable the situation by influencing people to feeling ashamed about death.

Quotes

"Gentle caring violence is all a part of the job" P.91

"The whole health-care-death-care complex is a jurisdictional chain, each link dependent on the idiosyncratic rules of the last." P. 94

People need as much care when they're dead as they do when they're alive."

This culture quiet literally covers death with a white sheet. Each body is confined under a white death, as is the topic of death as a whole. Which sparks the question and concerns of how our culture got to a point of such horror. The look of death reminds people where they are bound. Other cultures are more accepting of his "unexplored topic". Icelanders believe that a persons soul stays with the body days after death, so their bodies are not tended to, altered in any way for days. The culture in iceland shows a different kind of respect towards their deceased ones. Tom Jokinen makes the point that this culture is one that respects death solely out of fear. With our mind sets based off of fear we act in all seriousness. Tom Jokinen makes death humorous by having a open minded , curious approach to it. How would you go about transporting a 200 pound dead women? He writes about his tactics in this challenging situation. Very often Tom is lost at work, he is constantly receiving advice and tips. While preparing a body he recalls a piece of advice: Long easy thrusts in a racial pattern. Later to realize that it sounded somewhat pornographic. Throughout the text so far Jokinen has corrected himself, joked around with death, overall i find him saying the things we all think but never have the guts to say out loud.