From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

Content Warning: This section discusses death, abortion, funeral practices, and postmortem bodily phenomena.

Doughty discovers that the definition of death can vary depending on the cultural identity of the person or institution defining it. For instance, when she discusses the corpse of the Torajan man Rovinus, she differentiates between death “as Western medicine would define the term” and death “according to Torajan tradition” (55). While Western tradition would consider him dead, Torajan tradition considers him living. Rovinus had “stopped breathing,” and scientific equipment would declare his heart and brain to have ceased functioning, but the Torajan people see his physical state as “a high fever, an illness,” until an animal is sacrificed (55). According to them, this act would cue Rovinus to take his last breath alongside the animal and truly die. Thus, Doughty shows that the definition of death is linked to Cultural Diversity in Death Practices.

Even within Western cultural paradigms, individual definitions of death vary. When Sarah was verbally assaulted by protestors outside the clinic where she terminated her pregnancy, they accused her of killing her child. She yelled back at the protestors, “My baby is already dead!” (100). Even though her son’s vital organs had not ceased functioning, according to the definition of death by Western medicine, doctors advised Sarah to terminate her pregnancy since her baby had a terminal medical condition.