Cannibalism

When my siblings and I were children, my father would recite poems to us for our bedtime stories. They were certainly not children's poems and I don't think my mother approved, but we loved them anyway. We heard them so many times that now, many decades later, we can still recite all or part of these poems. One of the poems was The Yarn of the Nancy Bell by W. S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. I am particularly fond of this poem and I wonder if it doesn't indicate some innate fascination I have with cannibalism.

Barnes and Noble is offering courses at their website. I am currently taking the course on Moby Dick which, it turns out, is based on the historical tragedy of the whaleship Essex. This ship was destroyed by a whale and the survivors, much like those of the Nancy Bell, drew lots to see who would end up as dinner. Now I can't say that such things did NOT happen, but I must admit to some skepticism. If starvation and the survival instinct drives people mad enough that they would kill and eat their own kind, why would any of them submit to being eaten in the first place? And if they were all willing to sacrifice themselves for their fellow shipmates, why didn't they at least wait until someone had died before eating him? But notice how the cook and the old seaman from the Nancy Bell had abandoned the idea of drawing lots and resorted to treachery. I would imagine people with cannibalism on their minds would act more like that.

But, true or not, it's a powerful story. One we don't soon forget. Cannibalism stories are also common during wartime. The ancient historian, Josephus, tells of a Jewish mother (whose name was Mary, BTW) who kills and roasts her son, eats half of him, then tempts the Roman soldiers to eat the other half. These sorts of atrocity stories are common in wartime. I am skeptical of them because propaganda is such a powerful tool. And if you want to point out how desperate a situation is, cannibalism certainly does the trick.

Blake's reference to cannibalism in Europe, A Prophecy also deals with the horrors of war but he seems to be adding a social comment by making the one woman appear rich, wearing jewels and sitting on a throne. It puts me in mind of Jonathan Swift's marvelous satire, "A Modest Proposal", where he suggests that the children of the poor starving Irish should be bought for food by the wealthy and thus the children would become a benefit to society. Equating the rich with cannibals is not uncommon.

Another use of cannibalism stories is to demonstrate how evil someone is. Jews and witches, for example, were said to eat children. It was also claimed that the Nazis made sausages out of the Jews. Nothing says "bad guy" like a good cannibalism anecdote.

I find it interesting that in the one case cannibalism is intended to evoke sympathy and in the other hatred. But in Hannibal, it seems all topsy-turvy. The men who resort to cannibalism due to starvation (whether or not this actually happened) are the ones we find revolting, whereas Hannibal, who eats people because he enjoys it, seems to have our sympathy.

No matter what the purpose of cannibalism in propaganda or literature, it certainly gets our attention. In The Art of Memory, it is stated that one of the rules for creating imagery for a memory palace is to make it somehow horrible or absurd because such things stick in our minds. Thomas Harris certainly knows this. If nothing else, in Hannibal he has created images that I, for one, will never forget.