What Is Faust's View Of Death

April 10, 2012
The Work of Death
In This Republic of Suffering, Faust views the Civil War as an instrumental role on death that dealt savagely with both sides of surviving and dying, permanently altering the American psyche. She traces the attitudes of nineteenth-century Americans toward dying and death, funerary rites, grief and mourning, Faust examines how social beliefs reacted when subjected to the enormous destruction that the American Civil War brought. There were an estimated 620,000-plus fatalities resulting from the war. This war transformed how Americans understood death as well as the obligations the living bore the dead. It seems Faust records an increase in government involvement considering the aftermath of the war. The effect…show more content…
When the military confrontation became inescapable everyone seemed to feel that it was going to be a short time period. The first conflict the North entered was the Battle of Bull Run in the summer of 1861. A battle that the Confederates felt would end the Unions forward unified movement. However, neither side would have understood the magnitude, and length of horrific battles that would unveil itself to a divided nation. The amount of death tolls that showed its true face in the war was unimaginable. The war truly was pure hell. Faust argues death’s significance for the Civil War generation further became more apparent during this time. She focuses on the staggering number of deaths during those four violent years that affected ordinary Americans and transformed the nation. So, the reason for the increased amount of deaths that had never been seen before was due to certain variables. The variables that contributed to the war were that of changing military technology, Railroads and the increasing industrial capacity. First, the technology that contributed to the higher death rate used in this war was different, because the industrial revolution allowed for increased technology and expanding industries supplied mass production that equipped mass armies with new, longer range weapons, repeating firing weapons, hand guns, and heavier arsenal. The railroads played a role in that transporting weapons, and armies basically…show more content…
The atrocities that the war brought also brought along the work at the end of the battle that was the burying detail. The number of dead bodies dealt with was unimaginable, because it defied all administrative and logical capacities. Of course, there were thoughts of burials before the war began, but the number surpassed any person’s imagination. Faust observed, “When the war began, Military officials on both sides sought to establish regularized burial procedures, in no small part because decaying bodies and the stink that emanated from them were believed to pose serious threats to public health.” (Faust 63) So, when the war permitted both sides tried to keep an accurate account, but as the battles increased the cemeteries were entirely inadequate and field hospitals failed to keep careful records. Practical realities dictated that retreating armies did not have time to attend to the dead but had to depend on the humanity of their victorious opponents, who obviously would tend to their dead first. Confederate surgeon John Wyeth described how at the end of a long night after a confederate victory at Chickamauga, “most of the confederate dead had been gathered in long trenches and buried; but the Union dead were still lying where they fell. For its effect on the survivors it was the policy of the