Mike Zang - Archaic Views of Death

There's really no way for modern humans to truly understand how tribal societies perceived death, but many practices and cultural attitudes that we've reconstructed through archaeology and other studies of the past lend themselves for clarification.

As far as my own interpretation takes me, C.S. Lewis posits that the hrossa conception of death is equivalent to that of the indigenous outlook here on earth. During the conversation between Ransom and Augray, we see the discrepancies arise between the hrossa and sorn views on death. The hrossa

"They are right not to fear it, Ran-soom, but they do not seem to look at it reasonably as part of the very nature of our bodies -- and therefore often avoidable at times when they would never see how to avoid it." (Augray speaking of hrossa)

That's interesting because in my anthropology health and healing class we are discussing an analogous topic: female genital mutilation. The majority of people in America would probably and automatically regard this practice with scorn and disgust and deem it unrational, unpractical, and useless. However, the natives perceive FGM as an integral component to the structure of their localized societies. Without FGM, a women cannot maintain her cleanliness, is open to evil spirit possession, and thus has less of a chance to marry. Despite the potential risk factor of unsanitary methods in which the Sudan carry out this practice, infibulation (FGM) serves a very sacred and significant purpose. Nevertheless, during the late 19th and throughout all of the 20th century, British officials occupying Sudan mobilized direct and indirect crusades against this cultural tradition on the grounds that it was unethical, unsanitary, and savage. Essentially, Western colonizers sought to modernize an indigenous culture, or whitewash them with the intention of making Sudan more Westernized; this was for the ultimate purpose of improving the reproductive success of Sudanese women to cultivate a larger work force.

In relation to the hrossa views on death, which I see as nearly equal, the Sudanese perhaps put their daughters at a high risk of particular secondary effects including hemorrage, blood loss, infection, etc. and made childbirth more excruciating, but despite any of that, they saw their tradition as sacred towards life. To them, their practices maintained integrity. If death were to come to a young girl, then it was an exotic spirit or foreign malady, not their own doing. And frankly, I find this a much better way to perceive death.

Similarly, the Aztecs sacrificed 20,000 people on feast days as an offering to the gods in order to keep the universe in balance. Westerners might associate this practice with barbarism, savagery, unethicality, but truly they WERE maintaining the balance of the universe. As we can see quite clearly today, we have too many people and are constantly devising better, more efficient ways to preserve life, extend life, and bring more life to planet earth. Life is definitely a good thing, but too much of a good thing oftentimes ends in rot.