The Behind Of Formaldehyde Curtain Analysis

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“The Behind of Formaldehyde curtains” provides the audience informations about the behind the scenes in a funeral parlor. The essay describes the operations step by step showing the reader how immoral the funeral industry is. The author is a muckraker, trying to expose the barbaric acts that funeral industry does to make profit from the mourning everyday americans. Jessica Mitford, the author, describes in this essay the operations corpses go through to look presentable in front of their moaning relatives and friends. In the essay, Mitford uses strong word choices that are visually and descriptive. She uses evocative imagery, describing scenes that it makes the audiences feel like they are there. The author is targeting everyday people because …show more content…
However, Mitford uses pathos, which appeals to one’s emotion, and logos, which appeals to reason. For example of pathos, “It was jabbed into the abdomen, poked around the entrails and chest cavity… pumped out and replaced with “cavity fluid”. This quote shows pathos because the emotion was to represent revulsion because of the descriptive detailing of the process. An example of logos, “In most states… signatures of the next kin must be obtained before an autopsy may be performed, before the deceased may be cremated, before the boy may be turned over to medical school research purpose...provision must be made in the descendant’s will”. Furthermore, Mitford uses different schemes and tropes to help support her point of view. One of the schemes she often uses is asyndeton. For example is “and is in short ordered sprayed, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged, and neatly dressed…”. The main rhetorical device Mitford used was hyperbole, because the entire essay was using exaggerating terms and situations that draws a lot of attention to the topic.
Even though the topic of death, embalming and funerals are not the most enjoyable subject. Mitford’s tone, interesting word choices and the different uses of rhetorical devices makes this a informational as well as unusual but persuasive and strong
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