Humans, The Last Resort

“Carlitos said to Fito. He said ‘if we weren’t rescued, he’d eat one of the pilots to get out of here.’ There was a pause; then Carlitos added, ‘that hit on the head must have made him slightly mad.’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Fito, his honest, serious features quite composed. ‘It might be the only way to survive.’”

“For some days several of the boys had realized that if they were to survive they would have to eat the bodies of those who had died in the crash. It was a ghastly prospect. The corpses lay around the plane in the snow, preserved by the intense cold in the state which they had died. Canessa did not argue just from expediency. He insisted that they had a moral duty to stay alive by any means at their disposal, and because Canessa was earnest about his religious belief, great weight was given to what he said by the more pious among the survivors. He said ‘it is meat that is all it is. The souls have left their bodies and are in heaven with god.’”

“God wanted them to live, and he gave them the means to do so in the dead bodies of their friends.”

At this point the survivors are trying to climb the mountain to get to the other side where the tail of the plane is located. They are trying to get to the tail of the plane because they know it contains a battery which may be able to power the radio. In order to climb the mountain they need energy which they aren’t getting from eating chocolate and one shot of wine. The survivors have realized they need meat to survive on the mountains. Since they are all extremely religious I would not expect them to defy their morals. However as shown in the quote above, Canessa (the most religious) states that its only meat and the souls have left their bodies. He tries to make it acceptable to eat a human corpse claiming god wanted them to live by eating their friends.

I found this ironic because at first the survivors of the crash were joking about eating the pilots but now they are actually considering eating the preserved corpses. I feel that this is their last resort of survival and survival is more important than ones morals at this point in time…