January 23

Shipwrecked

Read the story of Richard Parker and Tom Dudley. Is what

Dudley did defensible? What would you have done?

 

To EAT or not to EAT?

Cannibalism is always a controversial topic; especially if we’re trying to justify the actions of Dr. Hannibal Lector but let’s not go that far.

The story of Dudley and Richard Parker was one of survival. I didn’t read into the story in detail but as far as I know, Richard Parker went into a coma after being shipwrecked and Dudley decided to eat him in order to survive. Dudley did survive but he went to jail for a certain amount of time for eating Richard Parker.

I think I would rather die than taste human flesh. I couldn’t even eat a talking chicken, yet alone a talking human… Unless Richard Parker couldn’t talk, then I would have to think about it.

Now what I noticed was Richard Parker has been used in another cannibalism based story, ‘The Life of Pi’ which I really enjoyed so this event in history has influenced books and stories or was it the other way around…

I guess this may have been the first mainstream case of cannibalism. I’m not sure what was going through Dudley’s head at the time and I want to give him the benefit of the doubt that he thought Parker was going to die and he didn’t want to end up in the same situation, and eating him would have meant survival.

What’s more interesting however is the fact that a similar situation involving a Richard Parker occurred several years before in the novel written by Edgar Allen Poe. A very interesting coincidence if you believe such coincidences can occur. This is what I was hinting at earlier and for those that don’t know about this strange happening, I suggest you go look it up and be enlightened. I know what I believe…