Cannibalism in the Cars

Cannibalism in the Cars is a short story written in 1868 by American writer Mark Twain. It tells the darkly humorous tale of apparent acts of cannibalism from the point of view of a congressman on a snowbound train. It indirectly satirises the political system of the United States of America.

Synopsis

The story is about a group of men trapped on a train during a snow storm. After a week, the men gradually realize that they must resort to cannibalism for survival. They hold ineffective elections to select candidates, and follow parliamentary procedure to a fault.

The story continues in a similar vein for the other passengers: "After breakfast we elected a man by the name of Walker, from Detroit, for supper. He was very good. I wrote his wife so afterward. He was worthy of all praise. I shall always remember Walker. He was a little rare, but very good. And then the next morning we had Morgan of Alabama for breakfast. He was one of the finest men I ever sat down to, handsome, educated, refined, spoke several languages fluently, a perfect gentleman, he was a perfect gentleman, and singularly juicy."

At the end of the story after the teller of the story departs the train, the conductor clarifies to the shocked listener: "He was a member of Congress once, and a good one. But he got caught in a snow-drift in the cars, and like to have been starved to death. He got so frost-bitten and frozen up generally, and used up for want of something to eat, that he was sick and out of his head two or three months afterward. He is all right now, only he is a monomaniac, and when he gets on that old subject he never stops till he has eat up that whole car-load of people he talks about."

Analysis

The story uses wordplay to raise to the foreground the latent double meanings that accompany political discourse. It is framed as a second-hand story heard by another train rider, with the narrator using the vernacular and mannerisms of a politician rather than a common man. The conclusion of the story leaves open to interpretation whether the entire story might be a fabrication or might be true but masked away from the popular conscience.

Publication History

It was first published in November 1868^[1] in The Broadway Annual literary magazine, and later included in Sketches, New and Old (1875) and other collections.

References

↑ Jimmie R. Le Master; James Darrell Wilson; Christie Graves Hamric (1993). “The” Mark Twain Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp. 123–124. ISBN 978-0-8240-7212-4. Retrieved 22 May 2013.

External links

Text

Full text
text of Sketches, New and Old which includes this story
The Broadway Annual

Audio

Cannibalism in the Cars public domain audiobook at LibriVox

Mark Twain

Bibliography

Novels	The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Prince and the Pauper Adventures of Huckleberry Finn A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court The American Claimant Tom Sawyer Abroad Pudd'nhead Wilson Tom Sawyer, Detective Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc A Double Barrelled Detective Story A Horse's Tale The Mysterious Stranger Hellfire Hotchkiss

Short stories	"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" "Cannibalism in the Cars" "General Washington's Negro Body-Servant" "My Late Senatorial Secretaryship" "Some Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls" "A Literary Nightmare" "A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage" "The Invalid's Story" "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn" "1601" "The Stolen White Elephant" "Luck" "The Million Pound Bank Note" "Those Extraordinary Twins" "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" "A Dog's Tale" "Extracts from Adam's Diary" "The War Prayer" "Eve's Diary" "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" "My Platonic Sweetheart" "The Private Life of Adam and Eve" "Advice to Little Girls"

Short story collections	Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance Sketches New and Old A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime Punch, Brothers, Punch! and Other Sketches Mark Twain's Library of Humor Merry Tales The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches The Washoe Giant in San Francisco

Plays	Is He Dead? Colonel Sellers Colonel Sellers as a Scientist

Essays	"The Awful German Language" "Advice to Youth" "English As She Is Taught" How to Tell a Story and Other Essays "Concerning the Jews" "A Salutation Speech From the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth" "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" "To My Missionary Critics" "Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany" "What Is Man?" "Queen Victoria's Jubilee" "The United States of Lyncherdom" "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" Letters from the Earth

Non-fiction	Territorial Enterprise letters "Letters from the Sandwich Islands" The Innocents Abroad Roughing It Old Times on the Mississippi A Tramp Abroad Life on the Mississippi Following the Equator What Is Man? Is Shakespeare Dead? Autobiography of Mark Twain Mark Twain's Notebook King Leopold's Soliloquy The Private History of a Campaign That Failed Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire The Bible According to Mark Twain Christian Science

Speeches	Votes for Women

Places, events, and legacy	Conception Birthplace Historic Site State Park Boyhood Home and Museum Mark Twain Cave Mark Twain in Nevada Territorial Enterprise Sagebrush School Mark Twain House, Hartford, Connecticut Stormfield Publisher, Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs Twain–Ament indemnities controversy Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Mark Twain Tonight! Mark Twain: The Musical In popular culture

Family	Olivia Langdon Clemens (wife) Susy Clemens (daughter) Clara Clemens (daughter) Jean Clemens (daughter) John M. Clemens (father) Orion Clemens (brother)

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