Western Attitudes Toward Death began as a series of lectures presented to Johns Hopkins University, which he gave for the express purpose of translation and publication.
Because Ariès saw America as influential in changing the way the western world viewed death, he felt it was important to have his ideas circulating on both sides of the Atlantic.
True to his roots as a medieval historian, he cites examples such as of King Ban, Tristan, and Lancelot—these characters are shown facing death while knowing that 'their time has come' and prepare themselves by following prescribed rituals.
He states that men of that era felt a "love of life which we today can scarcely understand", due to our increased longevity.
[11] Looking to themes in artwork from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, Ariès argues that death became categorically similar to sex, and was seen as a break from the ordinary.
Although people continued to participate socially and ritualistically in death, and crowds still flocked to the bedside of a dying person, their purpose had changed.
He states that people of this period lamented that death was a complete rupture from life and were consoled by preserving the memory of the deceased.
However, by the eighteenth century, bodies were buried away from the church in individual cemetery plots, where people felt they could commiserate with the dead and cultivate their memory.
[14] Ariès also observes that while all western people celebrated cemeteries and their new role in society, France, Italy, and Germany are known for more elaborate tombs and burial sites when compared to the simple style of North America, the UK, and Northwestern Europe.
Ariès names two societal trends that he believes were very influential on shifting attitudes toward death: the advent of the hospital as a place of dying, and a growing sentiment that life should be, above all, happy.
Citing trends in literature, such as the work of Tolstoy, Ariès argues that the feeling surrounding death changed before its actual rituals did.
He states that in this current period there is no great and dramatic act of death, which was what family, friends, and neighbors used to gather together to witness.
Ariès's second observation regarding social changes over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was that happiness became the expected dominant emotion.
Expressing sadness or emotional turmoil, Ariès argues, is likely to be equated with bad manners, mental instability, and unnecessary morbidity.
Referencing anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, Ariès states that death has replaced sex as western society's greatest taboo.
[18] Ariès also argues that the prevalence of cremation in Britain and parts of Europe reflects the western world's denial of death.
He states that the act of cremation, with its usual lack of formality, associated rituals, and permanent location for remains, is the ultimate expression of "forbidden death".
Embalming became common practice in America by the early to mid-twentieth century, and American funerals are distinguished by the "wake" or viewing of the deceased.
Historian David Stannard, writing for the American Historical Review, noted the book was similar in structure, style and "panoramic vision" to Ariès's earlier works in the history of childhood.
[27] One critic found that Ariès did not adequately differentiate between rich, poor, rural, and urban groups, and also that he relied too heavily on literature, which can sometimes distort reality.
[27] Historians of science and medicine felt their discipline had been overlooked and that changes in medical practice impacted death more than Ariès implied.
[28] Furthermore, Porter argues that the way people die is very much dependent on the disease they are suffering from, and it is difficult to make comparisons and generalize a single mode of death.
Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death exposed high profit margins for funeral directors and the large manufacturers that supply the material necessities related to burial (caskets, grave markers, etc.)
[30] Similarly, Ivan Illich, a well-known critic of modern medicine, devoted a chapter in his famed work Medical Nemesis to the horrors of hospital death.