CONCLUSION

Throughout Laura Leiberman’s course, American Dead and Undead, I became interested in the ways in which death, dying, and grieving impacted communities and vice versa. Particularly, I wanted to know: What kind of work did a community do in the grieving process? In his book, The Puritan Way of Death, David Stannard discusses the ways in which the Puritan community absorbed an individual’s grief in the event of a death. He explains that the Puritans’ almost vain attempt to sustain their community in the face of changing social structure bore an intensified form of the common proclivity, “We” rather than “I”, in the colonial era [1]. The result was a “self-righteousness” that only reinforced the Puritan’s dislocation from the rapidly changing world. Still, the Puritans appropriated the work of mourning a death throughout their community, diffusing it to the point of a more subdued anguish.

Likewise, Drew Faust asks in Republic of Suffering: Which resources from culture help “do the work” of death? Examples range from the very literal work that industrialized weaponry did in facilitating the death of tens of thousands of soldiers to Walt Whitman’s status as a “national mourner” and the work his poetry did to alleviate national anguish [2]. Society employed cultural narratives, Faust explains, to help structure the chaotic affront to individual value that was the mass death of the Civil War. Victorian and Christian (or patriotic) narratives bridged the otherwise unbearable gap between home and battlefield [3]. Stories and traditions enabled people to discover meaning in the otherwise death-ridden turmoil.

In "The Reversal of Death: Changes in Attitudes Toward Death in Western Societies," Philippe Ariès locates the cultural work of death in family politics. He argues that an initial distrust of the family as evident in last wills and testimonies gave way to a whole-hearted trust, in turn yielding to the denial of the truth of death and the ability to publicly mourn [4]. The work of mourning was bequeathed on the institution—particularly the hospital—and individuals were stripped from their ability to grieve and die a “good” death. Concealing the eminent and immanent truth from the dying—forcing the individual to die in ignorance—according to Ariès, became the norm [5]. Public outcries in the form of grief and mourning threaten to disrupt the precarious cultural stability in modern America. For Ariès, the resources from culture do the work of silencing death and reinforcing its status as taboo.

Death, these authors show, impacts individuals and communities in varying degrees depending on the cultural resources at hand. Given the Internet’s omnipresence in American culture, its novel communicatory implications, and its ability to foster “imagined,” yet real communities, its status as a new, valuable cultural tool makes it a powerful vehicle for handling grief and the work of death.

I showed, first, by looking at two communities’ responses to grieving, and then at two individuals’ roles within the broader Reddit community, that the online message forum provides ample support for anonymous grievers to discuss their condition in a safe space. In communities dedicated to supportive participation, grief was welcomed with a response like, “I’m so sorry for your loss,” followed by advice or a related personal anecdote. Using the democratic upvote and downvote system as an tool for analysis, I showed that certain communities constructed their identities and narratives surrounding grief through their votes.

Outside of grief-specific, or support-specific communities, successful (upvoted with supportive comments) posts were often transmitted in the form or language of an Internet tradition—like the image macro memes or a popular comment that captivated a grieving audience. This provided the poster with a valuable connection to the community’s past, a way to meaningfully participation in the present, and an avenue through which to diffuse grief among a broad community. Some comments took a turn for the worse, as users accused grievers of seeking attention or Karma points, but supportive members of the community and a flurry of downvotes immediately quelled these detractors.

In conclusion, my analysis exhibits the very lively discussion surrounding death and grieving in the modern era. Philippe Ariès’ argument—that Americans silence grievers and dying individuals by withholding or concealing the truth of death—is outdated. One need look no further than on anonymous online message boards to witness the discussion unfolding in real time.

References

[1] Stannard, The Puritan Way of Death, pp. 169.

[2] Faust, This Republic of Suffering, pp. 143-145.

[3] Ibid., 15.

[4] Ariès, “The Reversal of Death: Changes in Attitudes Toward Death in Western Societies,”

pp. 532-543.

[5] Ibid., 547.