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Montaigne The Cannibal Analysis

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“Truly here are real savages by our standards; for either they must be thoroughly so, or we must be; there is an amazing distance between their character and ours” (158). Michel de Montaigne, takes a stand in The Cannibal, and says that the Brazilian’s didn’t follow the European views, and were barbaric. He definitely took how they were living, and analyzed it. Montaigne believed that people should not fight each other and tear them apart. The thought of fighting, and killing someone to the death sickened him,
I conceive there is more barbarity in eating a man alive, than when he is dead; in tearing a body limb from limb by racks and torments, that is yet in perfect sense; in roasting it by degrees; in causing it to be bitten and worried …show more content…

I think he would’ve rejected it immediately, but he knows that while some things are looked down upon, the things that they were doing during his time were just as bad. This man was known for taking everything in, and although he was a skeptic he never passed judgment on others. He knew that although he was firm in his beliefs that others thought, and acted differently. So, if presented with the Mayan games he would understand how that fit into their culture, and overall life style. He says it perfectly himself when he says,
I do not share that common error of judging another by myself. I easily believe that another man may have qualities different from mine. Because I feel myself tied down to one form, I do not oblige everybody else to espouse it, as all others do. I believe in and conceive a thousand contrary ways of life (façons de vie); and in contrast with the common run of men, I more easily admit difference than resemblance between us. I am as ready as you please to acquit another man from sharing my conditions and principles. I consider him simply in himself, without relation to others; I mold him to his own model. (F

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The Tempest was composed in London during the spring of 1611, which makes it the last great work by Shakespeare–later he wrote only some miscellaneous pieces. In those days it sufficed to visit a bar around the corner to acquaint oneself with first-hand stories related by travellers and adventurers, who merrily spun yarns about overseas riches and oddities. There was no need to dig up Montaigne’s essay on cannibals in order to vividly imagine and visualize the figure of Caliban. On the other side of the river– away from Southwark and closer to the city centre–esoteric books were read by those hungry for the secrets embedded in them by spiritualists and astrologists. Moreover, autopsy was frequently performed, despite the fact that such practices

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In conclusion, based on the open mindedness Montaigne had he would believe that even though the cultures are different it is ignorant to think of another group of people are savages because they have customs that others might not understand. More than likely if Montaigne was aware of the Mayan ball game then the ritual would have been more accepted by

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What they called barbarians remained “alive and vigorous [to] their genuine, their most useful and natural, virtues and properties” whereas the Europeans have damaged their way of living “to gratify [their] corrupted taste” (2515). Using an analogy of a wild fruit, Montagne argues that there is still excellence in the cannibals since their “savor and delicacy [remain] quite excellent, even to [their] state” (2515). Moreover, the French “have so overloaded the beauty and richness of [mother Nature] by [their] inventions that [they] have quite smothered her” (2515). Nevertheless, through the barbarians, mother Nature makes “her purity shines forth”, putting “wonderfully to shame [their]vain and frivolous attempts (92515) and inventions. Montaigne only think of the nation as barbarian since ‘they have been fashioned very little by the human mind” (92515) and that’s beautiful in its own way.

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