TOW #12 - Stiff (IRB)

Although Stiff is a much lighter read than the heavily scientific The Feminine Mystique, it is much harder to distinguish Roach's purpose. The uses of cadavers is certainly an unusual and interesting topic, but I doubt she wrote Stiff  for the fun of it. To find some sense of direction, I turned to Roach's introduction. In it, she writes, "The dead of science are always strangers." After reading through several chapters, Roach's larger purpose seems to be to give credit to the dead who have aided science. Roach achieves this through her humorous tone and frank diction.

Many people try to tiptoe around death with good intentions It's been generally accepted in society that death requires sensitivity, yet Roach bucks this sensitivity in her writing. This is not to say that Roach is callous or mean in her treatment of the cadavers. Rather, she speaks frankly about their appearances (and smells). It is a shock to her readers, initially, but it allows them to become closer to the cadavers. Roach writes of a cadaver, named UM 006, in an automobile crash test, "UM 006 has a comic's timing. He waits a beat, two beats, then slips forward again" (102). This way of writing portrays UM 006 as someone who is very much alive and who has a knack for entertaining a waiting audience. And, although odd, the readers laugh along with it. They feel a sense of warmth toward UM 006, who is just trying so hard to entertain his audience. They see that UM 006, who seems like just a body used for research, was a person who belonged to someone before death -- and that personhood should still be respected.

Our sensitivity to death also distances us from it. We don't want to encroach on someone's grief, so we skirt around the fact that their beloved husband died. We don't want to be reminded that our loved ones are mortal, so we say that people pass away, not that they die. We still insist that it's a person's grandmother or father in a casket -- not just another one of the many bodies crematoriums and funeral homes see daily. All of this is done with the hopes to make death easier on the ones still alive. Yet, our carefully chosen words may cloud our perspectives on the dead. We forget how to treat them like people instead of delicate glass sculptures that may crumble when handled the wrong way. Roach's language allows the alive readers to confront the meaning and reality of death.