Before or after they were buried?
Actually this is not necessarily another case of a student inept at writing about death, of which I have had words before. So often they are trying for a gravitas, a profundity, that they can’t get at with ideas or words. After laughing, I do spend a moment appreciating their aspirations.
The student who wrote about “buried people” here was discussing the case of a man who stole damaged or disintegrating cemetery art, refurbished it, and in some instances, including one spectacular case dealing with a Tiffany window, sold it. I ask students to decide what the man had actually done, and how criminal it is. I get some interesting essays from this topic.
This student is trying to say that the dead don’t care what happens to the stones (etc.) above them—or, in the case of the Tiffany window, the mausoleums around them. This is part of her argument that it is impossible actually to steal from the dead. So by “these buried people” she means “the people whose remains lie in this cemetery,” and by “dead and gone” she means “no longer capable of owning anything or having an opinion about material goods”; “no longer in this world.” She’s taking the clichéed “dead and gone” quite literally.
And I knew what she meant.
Alas, though, as in many of the other Horrors I copy into my little book, she may have meant it, but she didn’t write it.
The written word is a funny thing. We set great store by it, and whole disciplines—industries—have been built up to serve and interpret it (Literary Criticism, History, Constitutional Law, Theology…). Yet it is slippery, elusive, protean, relative, source-dependent, reader-dependent, inadequate.
Nevertheless, any effort at interpretation must begin with the thing itself, das Ding an sich—in this case, the word. And by that measure, my student has not made a point: she has merely written what seems to be a self-defining sentence that evokes laughter. Or at least silly questions.
Well, all I can say is, I hope I am well dead and gone before anyone tries to bury me.
You Knew What I Meant 
August 13th, 2012 at 10:34 am
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the author of The Last Days of Pompeii, had a dread of being buried alive. He arranged that his grave would include an air source as well as a loud bell he could ring if he awoke. I don’t know how long his body was in that grave before it was finally moved to Westminster Abbey, where there are no air sources, as far as I know, and the graves are silent.
August 13th, 2012 at 10:45 am
Poe had the same fear. It seems to have been widespread in the 19th century. There are a lot of stories of people being buried with bell-pulls.
August 13th, 2012 at 10:48 am
This Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_being_buried_alive mentions Poe’s story “Premature Burial” specifically. One of his very scariest. But also notice how many of his other horror stories involve being walled up alive, or entombed prematurely….
August 14th, 2012 at 12:53 am
Maybe she was expressing relief that they didn’t turn into zombies.
August 15th, 2012 at 7:56 am
Well, now, there’s a reasonable explanation! Ha ha thanks!
August 14th, 2012 at 12:23 pm
I remember my father laughingly telling my mother to make sure he was “good and dead” before they buried him. The student leaves no possibility of mistakenly burying someone still breathing. It’s only right that they should be dead before they’re buried, gone the way of all flesh.