Kendal Gast
ENGL 355
Cannibalism
Quickly
after doing initial research, I came across several Greek and Roman myths
involving cannibalism. Specifically,
that of the Roman god Saturn. Saturn
apparently had six kids and ate all of them out of fear they would take the
throne from him, as Saturn did from his father.
Spanish artist Francisco Goya painted a mural on a wall in his own home
depicting a naked figure gripping a dismembered body in its fingers and mouth. Although it is not directly stated nor was
the painting meant to be publicly shown, art restorers have ascribed the name Saturn Devouring His Son to the
mural. This was in the late 1700’s, and
Peter Paul Reuben’s 1636 painting of the same name may have inspired Goya. However, Reuben’s painting is a much more
detailed and delicate style compared to that of Goya’s harsh and horrifying
mural. Goya’s painting appears in the 2010
movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
(the one with Shia LeBeouf) on a secondary character’s wall.
I mention
these artists and references because of their historical context and some
interesting metaphors. In the Wall Street movie, Gordon Gecko is
looking for a replacement/protégé, which he sees in LeBeouf’s character. Gecko is of course still up to no good and
turns on LeBeouf towards the end of the film.
This is clearly a depiction of greed and what happens when people let
greed control their lives. Gecko already
lets greed control his life, but in Goya’s painting, we aren’t really sure
where the madness of Saturn comes from.
Is he mad as a result of eating his son, or is he already mad and eating
his son only adds to his craziness?
There are
several connections to be made in The
Road. The man struggles throughout the
novel with the possible scenario of killing his only son, the son he was
directed by God to keep alive. While
killing his son isn’t really cannibalistic, it is still representative of the
tension between old and young generations.
In ancient times, specifically with Goya’s painting, disagreements and
worries were apparently solved with cannibalism. For the man and the boy, their disagreements
and worries are solved with language.
And very sparse, terse language.
The boy is very perceptive of events that happen to the pair, such as
questions over the people kept locked in the basement or his questioning of
whether or not good guys eat people.
Weaving
cannibalism into the novel as a theme itself suggests how time consumes
everything: the earth, nature, humans,
life… so far that humans themselves consume each other. We’ve talked before in class about how
nuclear weapons ushered in a new age of perception and understanding because we
gained the ability to annihilate ourselves – relatively easily. The
Road as a novel presents itself as one possible scenario if humans do
decide to practice cannibalism on a global scale. The computer program we talked about also
comes into play, in that because we destroyed ourselves, only more destruction
can come from it, like how that horrific band of people has a stockpile of
chained people to eat because there’s obviously no food left.
The man and
the boy could represent then, the two-lined code justifying violence when
needed but to always be nice first. I
also think the novel displays the simplicity of those two lines as well since
there aren’t any chapters and grammatical conventions like apostrophes,
quotation marks, or commas. Perhaps the
biggest message from the novel is the danger of consumerism. While total annihilation is a strong
possibility, hope will always exist as the simple command of love.
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