For my optional blog post make up extravaganza, (one post can be an extravaganza), I am going to look forward to The Road while also looking back (a smidge) at Parable of the Sower. I actually read the entirety of The Road last night, but there shouldn’t be any spoilers in here.
I want to examine cannibalism in these two novels, and as a theme overall. Cannibalism is the big no-go of the post-apocalyptic good guys. Lauren is very matter of fact about what she is willing to do to survive. She will kill others who threaten her own existence. But she won’t eat anybody. Likewise, the father of The Road promises his son that no matter what, they won’t eat any of their fellow human beings. (So, no, you probably won’t get to see Viggo Mortensen eat anybody in theaters this Thanksgiving.) Why, amidst all the moral ambiguity and nihilistic destruction of these wastelands, are our beloved protagonists refusing to eat the supporting cast? Looking from a purely amoral standpoint, and strictly as a matter of survival, cannibalism may be seen as justifiable . But it is one of the few practices that is a near universal cultural taboo. And even in the dire situations the protagonists find themselves in, it is one taboo they are unwilling to break and which remains to them unbroken by the onset of dystopia.
I think this has more to do with psychology than it does with social mores. Significant to this idea is the concept of the abject, a term, that in literary criticism, is closely related to Freud’s uncanny. Critic Julia Kristeva discusses the “abject” in her 1982 book Powers of Horror. She cites the human corpse as essentially the ultimate source of abjection. To crib from a Wikipedia paraphrase of the essay, which I don’t have on hand: “To confront a corpse of one that we recognize as human, something that should be alive but isn’t, is to confront the reality that we are capable of existing in the same state, our own mortality.” And this is from merely encountering or viewing a corpse. Kristeva further characterizes the abject as those things which we cast out, and separate from ourselves, (psychically or literally) in order to create a secure psychological identity. To consume the abject then, to take in the abject, is to invite total psychological crisis and the dissolution of identity, potentially resulting in insanity. In this regard cannibalism is the ultimate confrontation with abjection and an acute risk for psychological breakdown. So maybe there is more to not eating dead people than setting a good example for your kid.
(Possibly TO BE CONTINUED next week)