The act of eating one's own race. I was sitting down with my little brother, Joseph, just the other weekend, and watching Pirate's of The Carribean with him. He loves the part where Jack Sparrow is tied upside down, and is about to be burnt up, because it is made funny. Of course, you know that he isn't really going to be eaten, and will eventually escape with the other pirates. No one being harmed, except for the traitor-bad guys, who stole from the good-bad guys.
Yet in The Road the tone is so much more intense and terrifying, that I wouldn't even imagine laughing. Here they are, the son - not much older or younger than my brother - and the father, starving to death, and they happen upon a group of humans being kept locked in a room, freezing, and being saved for supper. How absolutely blood-curdling, to realize that these people were going to be eaten by their own human brothers and sisters!
These two scenarios of cannibalism are presented in such different ways. In the Pirates movie, it is comical, while in the novel, it is absolutely sinister. The feeling that you get from watching a movie, while eating popcorn with your little brother, and listening to his peels of laughter as the pirates escape, fills you with good spirits. The opposite happens when reading about the pitiful human beings, about to be eaten, and the heart-rending situation of the father and of the son.
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