Poetry · Chapter
In Pickle explained
The chapter satirizes the embalming of President Garfield's body, criticizing the poor quality of the preservation and the hypocrisy of public mourning.
What happens
The chapter satirizes the embalming of President Garfield's body, criticizing the poor quality of the preservation and the hypocrisy of public mourning. It questions the dead's right to complain about how they are treated after death, using the metaphor of pickling and preserving food to mock the superficiality of funeral rites and memorials.
Themes in this chapter
Hypocrisy and Corruption
The chapter mocks the hollow public mourning and cheap embalming, exposing the corruption and insincerity behind the grand funeral displays.
Mortality and Regret
The dead are portrayed as dissatisfied with their treatment, highlighting the futility of posthumous concerns and the regret of a life poorly honored.
Key passages
“The journals say that the embalming done To Garfield’s body badly was begun, Faultily finished all too soon—in short Was of a most unsatisfactory sort.”
Newspapers reported that the embalming of Garfield's body was started poorly and finished hastily, making it completely unsatisfactory.
Opens the chapter with the factual scandal of Garfield's botched embalming.
“With blazing eulogies in crowded halls, And mourning emblems blackening the walls; With gorgeous funerals, both at the spot Where you were buried and where you were not— A dummy funeral’s inutile show Fifty to manifest a dummy woe;”
There were grand eulogies and black mourning decorations, plus lavish funerals at both the real burial site and a fake one—a useless display meant to show false grief.
Satirizes the excessive and hypocritical mourning rituals.