Obituaries in American Culture

The Forgotten Dead

THE FORGOTTEN DEAD If Aristotle had been an obituary writer, he likely would have writ' ten about the deceased's strongest virtues and forgotten his or her occasional moral transgressions. Aristotle wrote of the constancy of virtues, that they do not follow changes of fortune but should be accessories of a person's life as a whole. "Among these [virtuous] activities ... it isthe most honorable which are the most permanent," he argued. "For that is apparently the reason why such activities are not likely to be forgotten."1 A society, then, should tend to remember only the lasting virtues of its individual citizens, with obituaries providing an opportune place to commemorate the worth of each life as a whole while omitting and thus forgetting that person's unworthy attributes. Historically, the idea of death has helped people assess the value of their lives. Obituaries help in that life assessment by publishing the noteworthy attributes of individual lives, recalling for the public the virtues of deceased citizens. And just as the Sun deemed Baltimore businessman George C. Collins's death in 1855 a "public loss,"2 so too were his and others' lives considered public models, instructing readers about worthy citizen attributes and actions . Newspaper obituaries do more than simply chronicle basic facts about deaths; they also serve as commemorations and are invested 129 The Forgotten Dead with extraordinary significance.3 Indeed, obituaries offer a vision of the ideal American life in different historical eras. But popular, mainstream newspaperscertainly did not publish obituaries forevery person who died in their respective cities, nor did they list every attribute of even those lives commemorated. In fact, in a democracy that extolls egalitarian values,manyAmericans have been excluded from obituary pages, and many attributes have been ignored. Were these lives deemed unworthyor somehownot representative of a social ideal? Such exclusions, whether deliberate or not, should offer still more insight into cultural values of these eras. Thus, in a study that focuses on increasing inclusion on obituary pages in American history, this chapter seeks to understand just who and what were forgotten . Cathy N. Davidson, examining of the rise of the novel in America, reminds historians that "the omissions in a text are often as revealing as what the text explicitly tells. Yet it is difficult to formulate the rules whereby silence is admissible as historical evidence ."4 Obituaries are text, too, constructed fragments of history, tautological commodities meant for public consumption that are necessarily limited by constraints and professional norms of the dominant culture. Becauseobituariesdeal both in virtues and in cultural relationships, the contributions of two renowned ethical/ historical thinkers, one modern and one ancient, lend insight into who and what might have been forgotten. The writingsof Aristotle, whose Nicomachean Ethics is a guide to living an ideal and virtuous life, aids in an examination of virtues. His classification of virtues and his "doctrine of the mean" have influenced ethical scholars for more than 2,000 years and help in determining certain social excesses and deficiencies deemed unsuitable for commemoration. And, second, any work that examines cultural exclusion could look at the debate inspired by the controversial historian and ethicist Michel Foucault, who wrote about power relationships in society. The newspaper obituary, in fact, could be considered a battleground between ideas of these two theorists. Byattempting to record the salient aspects of citizens' lives, the obituarywould seem to cele130 The Forgotten Dead brate individual virtues, to record what is unique and good about each life. But as a product of the dominant culture, the obituary would exclude some citizens and attributes and would subsume others into the mainstream culture. Of course, these theories are by no means all-inclusive. They are but two simple examples of how the merging of ethical theory and history might provide new windows to historical textual silences. Many other social observers' ideas and theories could offer still more information about who and what were excluded from mainstream American newspapers' obituary pages. Newspapers have always worked to lure and keep audiences, attempting to give readers not only information deemed necessary but also information perceived as interesting or newsworthy. As newspapers became more mass publications and worked to appeal to the middle and lower classes aswell as the elites, editors began publishing more sensationalized news. Those values crept into commemorative obituaries in rather surprising and interesting ways. These obituaries, though relatively sparse in number, offer occasional glimpses offorgotten groups...