A human corpse is often described as empty, void of the person who once lived there

Not “Just a Shell”: Meanings of the Corpse in Western Society

Jamie Roberts

A human corpse is often described as empty, void of the person who once lived there. Even though the body remains, the energy or soul is gone. Funeral director Thomas Lynch calls this phenomenon the “Just A Shell”theory.

“It is proffered as comfort in the teeth of what is a comfortless situation, consolation to the inconsolable. Right between the inhale and the exhale that such hurts produce, some well-meaning ignoramous is bound to give out with ‘It’s OK. That’s not her. It’s just a shell.’”(21)

In recent times, this shell is not handled personally. The obligations of preparation and disposal are taken care of by a funeral home, the dead are sent away and left to the care of strangers. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s just a body, just a shell.

The reason that the “Just A Shell” theory doesn’t really console is that it’s simply not true. A corpse is not just an object. Would people really spend thousands of dollars to bury and memorialize a lifeless form holding no significance? According to recent statistics, the average price for funeral services and burial in California is $5,060, with an average of $1,800 spent on the casket alone(Aiken,144). These are costs far greater than needed to safely and legally dispose of human remains.

The ritual of funeral rites are not distinct to humans alone. It should be noted that elephants not only bury their dead, but have on occasion left grave goods such as fruit and flowers in the graves of their deceased (Aiken,127). However, while an elephant burial might only cost a few hours of work, the cost of funeral services and committal for a human can run into the thousands. Much has been made of allegations accusing funeral home owners and directors influencing the recently bereaved to buy expensive goods and services, especially caskets, for their dearly departed. In 1963, Jessica Mitford published The American Way of Death, a bestseller that “portrayed an industry of bloodsuckers who were out to squeeze every possible penny from grieving families.” (Winner,85) Sometimes even members of the clergy, whom grieving loved ones will turn to for counsel, are part of the scam. In an article titled “Death, Inc.”, writer Lauren Winner tells a story about a minister who profits from the death of parishioners. Without apology, he claims that he often helps families pick out coffins, and later receives a commission of ten percent from the funeral home. (Winner, 82)

Due to the accusations contained in the Mitford publication and numerous other similar stories, states have enacted laws regarding misrepresentation of the costs and requirements of burial. Two of the most common untruths told by funeral directors are that embalming is required, and that either embalming or a high quality casket can actually prevent decomposition. In truth, embalming has been declared by the Centers for Disease control as unnecessary, and neither embalming nor a casket can stave off decay forever. Despite all that technology and chemicals can do, the only foolproof way of to prevent remains from putrefying is to have them cremated.

As a shell, the body is a reminder, a tangible object. The Hausa people in Niger believe that the soul has a physical nature. A soul can be caught, roasted, and its flesh eaten (Schmoll, 201 ). But in western society, there are no similar beliefs. There is no quantitative way to see or measure a soul, spirit, or even the energy required to sustain human life. These are elusive things that defy not just physicality but definition as well. When life or the soul leaves the body, the body remains, and is all that is left. Traits of personality and character remain embedded in the mind of the bereaved and in the body of a corpse, things such as an innocent young child’s angelic face, or a guitarist’s callused fingers. Even as a body, it still has identity, features that link it back to what it once was. A writing by Brad Weiss describes this concept in a non-Western setting, among the Haya people of Africa, “Death and burial in Haya communities establish a fixity and finality in personal identity...By eating their victim’s corpses sorcerers finish off, in effect, the completed and total person.”(Weiss, 189). In a western example from Thomas Lynch, “I once saw a churchmen nearly decked by the swift slap of the mother of a teenager, dead of leukemia, to whom he’d tendered this council (It’s just a shell). ‘I’ll tell you when it’s just a shell’, the women said. ‘Until I tell you otherwise, she’s my daughter.’” (Lynch, 21) The body retains identity, and the idea of mistreatment or decay can be painful. Physically, it is just a body. But when the body is buried, it is not merely the disposal of an organic form. The identity, the life, the memories, are symbolically buried as well. This is what funeral homes prey on. How can someone discard a family member as they would the pet hamster? Doesn’t Grandma deserve better? The flowers, casket, and marker that the family buys will be the last gifts that they ever give her. Surely this is not the time to shop in the bargain basement. The idea of that same beloved friend or relative being slowly consumed by insect or vermin is more than most can bear. However, decomposition is natural, and inevitable. Anyone who tells you differently is probably selling funerary services.

As members of western society have distanced themselves from their rural past, they also distance themselves from the most basic of funeral customs.

“Before the turn of the century, Americans may have been more in touch with death and as a result less fearful of the corpse. Farm accidents and childbirth complications caused many deaths in a more agrarian and pre-medically advanced society. Traditionally, Americans used to keep the deceased in their homes until everyone had a chance to view a body.” (Emerick, p.43)

It used to be that the dead were personally handled by their family. It was a family member who would wash and dress the body, preparing it for display and visitation within the home. In previous years there were higher death rates from agricultural accidents and childbirth. It has been suggested that due to this, in conjunction with the close handling of the deceased, Americans were at one time better versed in dealing with issues surrounding death and the physical remains left behind.(Emerick, p.43) Children learn social conventions from the world around them. If a body in the front room isn’t disturbing to anyone else; if handling and dressing the corpse were not odd, then future generations would learn to feel the same way. However, “In 1910, Ladies’ Home Journal decreed that the ‘parlor’ should be renamed the ‘living room’ to disassociate it from funeral parlors. Children were discouraged from going to funerals.”(quoted in Emerick 43) Practices which prevented a body from being mysterious and fetishized were suppressed, and the mystique and fear surrounding the corpse grew. It was no longer appropriate or safe for the body to remain in the home. The body must be taken away and sanitized before the funeral.

There are common myths that seems to be especially popular with children, concerning proper etiquette while passing a cemetery. For instance, while passing a cemetery you should hold your breath, and if you are in a car it might also be a good idea to lift up your feet and cross your fingers. Oddly enough, it seems that no one really knows why these rituals occur, or for what purpose. Some of the more vague ideas behind the practice concern either spirits entering the bodies of the living, or the future sex life of the breath holder. An undergraduate student majoring in anthropology stated that when she was younger, she was told that by not holding her breath, lifting up her feet, and touching an exposed screw head, while riding past a cemetery in a school bus, she would be condemned to a life of celibacy (Diepen interview). It would appear that these practices have little to do with respect for the dead or the final resting place, but more with the supernatural uncertainties tied to the corpse. It seems that these legends are derived from a misunderstood fear. Children understand that a corpse is taboo, but don’t necessarily have any idea why. The reasons they contrive are as good as any.

Even those who have experience with the deceased have their own stories. Alicia Ventresca, a recipient of a M.A. in anthropology, once shared the following story with a group of high school aged students at a summer camp. As the students were discussing supernatural occurrences that they had either witnessed or heard about, Alicia began to interject with tales from her previous summer of field work. She had been employed on a field crew in the southwest United States, and was staying at a hotel with the rest of her crew. To prevent the artifacts they had collected from being lost or stolen, the bags containing stone tools, pottery, and faunal remains were often brought into their rooms at night for safekeeping. Normally, this wasn’t a problem for the team, consisting of trained, responsible, professionals, unless the bags brought in for the night happened to contain human skeletal remains. Apparently, many of the archeologists present had strong feelings about sharing a room with the remnants of a fellow human. And after spending a night with remains in her room, Alicia felt the same way. She claimed that both she and her roommates had “extremely weird” dreams, the contents of which Alicia refused to elaborate on. She would only state that it was not something she would wish to do again.(Ventresca)

If the corpse is just a “ thing”, then why are people afraid of it? There are hundreds upon thousands of ghost stories and urban legends about bodies rising from the dead. Universal Studios had a successful run of horror movies based on the antics of the undead, including “Count Dracula”, featuring a fairly archetypal blood craving vampire; “The Mummy”, starring a mummified, cursed priest whose tomb was disturbed; and “Frankenstein”, presenting a doctor who puts life into a body of patchwork cadaver pieces. Not only were these movies were popular in their own day, a new version of “The Mummy” is out on video with a new sequel scheduled to hit movie theaters this summer.

From images of decay come even more frightening images of the dead. The vampires, zombies, and monsters, that come from the grave wan to eat our blood, brains, or simply terrorize us. From a scholarly, scientific viewpoint, there is absolutely nothing to fear. They are dead, they cannot move, talk, maim, or kill. Their physical capabilities are firmly confined to that of fertilizer. Yet, the stories persist. Certainly the ideas of decay, of the corpse slowly disintegrating through the aid of insects and bacteria is not a pleasant one. Again, the body does retain pieces of identity, But fear of the body goes beyond tales of horror. People are not just afraid of the bogeymen arising from the grave. People are afraid of the body initially.

“American culture has a definite fear and repulsion of the corpse. This is evident because of today’s utilization of funeral homes and medical services.” (Emerick, 43) Morticians take care of bodies, wearing plastic gloves and taking other precautions as to not come in contact with any of the bodily fluids. Anytime a body is handled, disease is a concern. A cadaver is an unwholesome, unhealthy thing, best left to be taken care of by trained professionals. “The corpse then is the repository for grotesque and tainted death.”(Emerick,43) This is a far cry from days gone by, when the corpse was displayed in the same room where people paid social visits and lived life. The body has become taboo.

So what is the body? For one thing, it is evidence. A body is definitive proof that a person is dead. There are no longer any loose ends, any other possibilities once the body is discovered. If the person was not dead before embalming, which is customarily performed in the U.S., they certainly will be afterwards, and no one would survive long in a sealed coffin six feet underground. A body is proof that the person did once exist. Grave sites are physical ties to the deceased, and even though almost all newspapers charge for obituaries, most will print a death notice free of charge. The body is an object of meaning, of unknown power, of reverence, sometimes even an object of sexual desire. Legislation is made regarding burial rights and requirements. Stories abound of ghosts rising from the dead to protest their untimely ends. People break into morgues or steal bodies to use for erotic purposes. Essentially, the corpse is a fetish object.

The corpse is an object of meaning. As stated earlier, if human remains were just an object, people would not spend so much time and money to take care of them. The body contains identity, it is a physical connection to the deceased. Some definitions of fetish equate the fetish object as a substitute for what people really want but can’t have. In the case of bodies, the exterior of the person substitutes for the complete person. Those who have died are gone, they cannot hear us and cannot tell us what they need or want. Yet people talk to corpses and are concerned about the “final wishes” of the deceased. The loved one can no longer be taken care of, but acts of caring are mimed in the rituals of funeral and burial. The body is washed and groomed, presented with flowers, and placed in a “comfortable” position in its casket. The person is no longer present to be honored, so the body is honored with ceremony and speeches. Closure is sought with the remains because they are all that is available. The body is evidence of life and death, humankind’s greatest achievement and greatest failure, for while humanity knows how to create a new life, it cannot stop death.

Corpses are powerful. People both fear and revere them as though even in their lifeless state they have amazing abilities. Some anthropologists will refuse to share sleeping quarters with centuries old remains. Horror movies and their terrifying images of the dead and not so dead have already been mentioned. Bodies are even believed to have magical properties. Druggists in sixteenth century Europe sold the powdered remains of mummies to be used for medicinal purposes. Supposedly mummy powder was a great cure for gout and other ailments.The uncorrupted bodies of Catholic saints are considered important holy relics and many claim that the even the graves of saints possess miraculous healing .

One of the best examples of the power of corpses would have to come from the study of forensics. Forensic anthropologist William R. Maples once wrote, “I have seen the tiny, wisp-thin bones of a murdered infant stand up in court and crush a bold, hardened, adult killer, send him pale and penitent to the electric chair. A small fragment of a women’s skullcap, gnawed by alligators and found by accident at the bottom of a river, furnished enough evidence for me to help convict a hatchet murderer, two years after the fact.” (Maples,2) Forensics has solved numerous mysteries, identified unknown remains, and uncovered many truths. Corpses don’t lie, and the details of life are firmly embedded in them.

Respect and reverence for the dead extends not just to moral and ethical codes, but legal code as well. There are laws protecting the deceased’s final resting place, and it is illegal to disturb burial grounds or the remains within them. The Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 requires all museums that receive federal funding, except the Smithsonian, to return human remains of Native Americans kept in their collections to the proper tribes and descendants. Pot-hunting and other grave looting activities, both of which can be extremely lucrative, are punishable by heavy fines and even jail time. Marx would probably be amused that corpses and grave goods, which are fetish objects, have become fetishized commodities.

Cadavers even meet Freud’s standards for a fetish object. People exist who are sexually aroused by corpses. Necrophilia is a rather difficult area to research though, since the truth of these stories is often questionable. Necrophilia could be considered in opposition to reverence of the corpse, since most people find the idea of using a dead body for sexual gratification an abominable, indecent act. On the other hand, it could be considered an excessive reverence for the dead, since they are preferred to the living.

In the end, the corpse is not a “just a shell”. A body may be empty of life, but remains full of meaning. So how did the corpse become a fetish object? According to Peter Pels, “The fetish, like the rarity, indicates a crossing of categorical boundaries, a border zone where one cannot expect the stability of meaning that is routine in everyday life.”(113) For most, dealing with death and cadavers is not a part of “everyday life”. When death occurs, answers are needed immediately to the pressing questions that arise. There are many ideas and traditions that come together to form the meaning the body holds. Science describes the physical changes that occur with the onset of death. Cultural custom dictates how the body should be taken care of and what services should be held. Religion, or the absence of religion, tells people what has happened to the soul of the deceased, or determines if there is a soul at all. Morality, scientific fact, and propriety all come crashing together at once, each providing a different meaning and a different viewpoint, blending together to create an answer. The answer is slightly different for everyone, but in the end, the body is more than just an object. It is the remains of a loved one or friend. It holds memories, laughter, sadness, and meaning. Peter Pels wrote that matter has different meanings, and that humans give matter meanings (91-92). So what is the meaning of human matter? In the end, it is whatever meaning people choose to give it.

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