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Grant Foote
Mr. Hackney
Rhetoric 101
November 9, 2014
Casual Cannibalism
Almost everyone on earth likes meat; bacon, steak, beef, chicken, etc. So far, we have
always had a supply of these luxuries and have taken full advantage of them. Take a moment to
think about being stranded someplace where there is no available food and there is no way to
escape, you havent eaten in a week and someone from your group has passed Would you
consider consuming them in order to survive? For centuries cannibalism has been illegal,
obviously, and people that even think about eating someone are considered mentally unstable,
but what if the boundaries of mental sanity were the only thing keeping you from living? Is
mental sanity a barrier to survival? In Samuel Clemons Cannibalism in the Cars Clemons uses
understatements to examine internal conflict and perspective to insinuate what would occur in a
savage population.
The internal conflicts of the story are very chilling and dark overall, the victims of this
snow drift are trapped with no food at all. For the first few days they are alright, they are hungry,
but they are thinking that help is going to be there any second. As you examine deeper into the
consciousness of the population; after 4 days, they start to think that help may never come, they
are hungry, and hopeless. The sixth day passes and that is when mental barriers start to break
down, the people no longer see each other as human-beings, they start to see each other as a
source of food. However, they maintain their civility, they form an electoral college as they start
to elect people to be consumed for the better of the entire group. The whole organization starts

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out from someone finally snapping and yelling we must determine which of us shall die to
furnish food for the rest! (Clemens 112) causing a huge uproar, however some of the population
decide to elect people to be the leaders in telling which people they should eat. This is morbid,
but at least there isnt chaos, to examine the mentality of this is far beyond what a normal person
would think. However, after the six days without any food, your body starts to devour itself, so
anything you can eat you will. The chairman and officers are selected, then we take a trip to
Salem, people are nominating other people to be devoured to the chairman: I nominate the
Reverend James Sawyer of Tennessee...I nominate Mr. Daniel Slot of New York I nominate
Mr. Samuel A. Bowen of St. Louis (Clemens 113) they then judge the looks of the person to
determine the amount of meat that would be given to the rest of the group, which is where all
internal conflicts are thrown from the court for they just want to eat.
There are a few perspectives to take note of in the story, the most basic one is of the
individuals trapped in the train car with nothing to eat. There isnt a day that goes by that you
arent hungry at least once, but with the snow drift, SIX days go by without food. They are most
likely light headed and weak and really all they want to do is eat something. I believe that all of
the people within the car are thinking the same thing about eating someone else within the car,
but they dont want to be the one to be called crazy so they just sit back. That is why when the
words we must determine which of us shall die to furnish food for the rest! (Clemons 112) are
spoken no one said anything, they just went straight forward into nominating people to be eaten.
The perspective that we also need to take note of however, is the person in which this gentleman
is telling his story to, they were having conversations and were getting along rather well. All of a
sudden, this man goes into a story, who he had just met today, about how he had to devour
another human being to survive, and not only that, but he also explained to the man in detail how

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good these people were to eat: Messick was very well, though rather high-flavored, but for
genuine nutritiousness and delicacy of fiber, give me Harris (Clemons 115). Now just take a
moment, think about talking to someone that you just met, and you are getting along rather well,
you like the same things, have similar views. Then, he tells you a story for how he ate five
people just to pass time. That would be the time to move seats or get off at the wrong stop for
me, because I dont want to be in any public transportation with a guy who has already passed
the mental barrier of eating another human being.
As a whole, the dark humor in the story was quite entertaining and made for a great
journey. Cannibalism has always been an interesting topic to me when I saw the name I knew
that this was the story I was going to read, and Clemons did a great job keeping people
entertained. Clemons had great use of understatements to convey his ideas on perspective and
internal conflicts and successfully made a story that could be dark, yet humorous.

Works Cited
Clemons, Samuel. Cannibalism in the Cars The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Ed.
Oates. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. 111-17. Print

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