If dying is a drama, what is the point of the story?

If dying is a drama, what is the point of the story

In her paper comparing cultural practices around death in the US and Japan, Susan Orpett Long (2004) says that people rely on several different “cultural scripts” to make sense of death. She sees social life as being like a drama, and the people like actors who play a role. Let us see how far we can take the dramaturgical metaphor of society. She identifies three different cultural scripts: medical, revivalist, and religious. For each script:

For each of these, note the page numbers for her main examples, either from the interviews in the US or Japan.

Then ask each other:

Reference

Long, Susan Orpett. 2004. “Cultural Scripts for a Good Death in Japan and the United States: Similarities and Differences.” Social Science & Medicine, Good and Bad Death, 58 (5): 913–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2003.10.037.

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