In his profile of the undertaker, Liebling begins the piece with generalities and narratives about the undertaker and his office. He slowly gets more and more specific when he moves from how an outsider would view the storefront, to outsiders and passersby within the store, to finally the undertaker and his interactions with visitors and neighbors.

Liebling is not only profiling the undertaker in this piece, however. He also provides a profile of the neighborhood and its residents. We learn that the area has a large Italian population and we also learn their quirky superstitions and beliefs. Liebling also takes care to spell out words to convey the accents and manners of speech of the residents.

I think he does a good job at being an objective observer in that he merely writes what he sees, doesn’t interject his own opinion into the narrative, and simply records the conversation he finds himself in the middle of.