R: Behold Death

“THE DEAD SHALL BE RAISED.” So proclaims the inscription over the gate of Grove Street Cemetery, designed by Henry Austin in the Egyptian Revival style. This field of graves has rested quietly at the heart of New Haven for over 200 years, and is interwoven with the history of our city and our university. New Haven’s cemetery is prominently located and open to the public, but this is not the case everywhere. Some cities delegate the maintenance of cemeteries to their houses of worship. Some cities, like San Francisco, have no cemeteries at all. But why does it matter?  If we, like Plato, consider the city to be a reflection of the human soul, then the location of our cemeteries takes on more than trivial importance. For this debate, I encourage you to do some “city planning.” Does Death deserve a place in our ideal city? Should cemeteries be walled off and sequestered from the land of the living? As an allegory for the soul, should our city behold Death with trembling, with mirth, or with indifference?

Not only is death inevitable, some might say, but it actually gives meaning to life. As such, confronting our mortality increases our gratitude for earthly life while it lasts and cultivates within us the character of saints. Avoiding reminders of death at all costs is dangerous to our souls and poisonous to our culture. Many societal ills can be attributed to our culture’s refusal to acknowledge the reality of death at its own peril. We misguidedly attempt to sterilize death by relegating it to stuffy white-walled hospital rooms—as if we could deprive death of its sting by removing its grossness; as if we could render ourselves immortal by simply avoiding the places where death besets us. Further, if we believe that society is a contract between the living, the dead, and the yet unborn, then certainly our city should contain cemeteries as physical reminders of the fact. As Joseph Bottum writes in his essay, “The living give us crowds. The dead give us communities.” How are we to remember our place within the historical community unless we are tangibly connected with our ancestors?

Some might argue, however, that public reminders of death are neither good nor healthy. Our actions should not be motivated by fear of death, but by love of life. The ability to make us afraid is one of Death’s cheap aesthetic thrills, and since our culture cannot be trusted to deal with death appropriately, we should avoid its representation in public life and the popular media. If we should not treat death with fearful reverence, then perhaps we should regard it mirthfully—but we should never gaze upon it with indifference, and too much frankness on the subject of death cultivates detachment rather than fervor. In the same way that gory movies desensitize us to violence if we consume too much of them, maybe we should restrict our exposure to the macabre, so as not to rob Death of its mystery.

Does Death belong in the public square? Or should we banish its likeness to the outskirts of the city? In a literal sense, is it healthy to be surrounded by reminders of our inevitable fate, whether in art, architecture, music, or some other form? Allegorically, how should the “city” of our soul countenance Death? With solemnity? With laughter? Or not at all?