A Self Consuming Cycle

The story of Erysichthon is probably my favorite of all the stories of metamorphoses. Aside of it being very absurd and causing me a great doubt about whether you can eat yourself to death, I saw it as a perfect representation of human kind and our future. He is a man, which like humans in society, looks for the use in everything regardless of their meaning to the world and the effect taking them can cause. We have taken the resources of the earth as if they where of our property and even if we say we are aware of the problem, the majority of us, continue with the cycle knowing that our consumption is leading to the ruin of earth and its natural structure. We or I, if this does not include you, which I am really sure, does, hear the alert by all to stop abusing but we pretend we understand and don´t follow anyway.

The story begins when he wants to cut down a tree beloved by the god Ceres and he does it without listening to the wise advice of the narrator. In this exact moment I am wasting unnecessary energy and am making part of the destructive cycle by having this computer, this clothes, this house, the lights, everything. As many of us receive the information and warnings with one ear and dispose it with the other, Erysichthon disobeys and stubborn does what he wanted to do in the first place saying: “ It’s only a tree the goddess likes, but say it was the goddess herself, I´d cut it down just the same” (33). As Ceres hears the news he punishes him sending hunger to hunt him until his death. He gradually eats everything existing and even gets to a point in which he sells his mother for food. This represents how many humans do whatever is necessary, and loose all compassion, to achieve what they want. I also relate Eryschthon’s situation to the problems of hunger in the world today. The population is increasing by the second and a whole lot of people suffer of hunger. More food is produced to abolish it but then since there is more food the population increases once again. It is a cycle in which if a sacrifice is not made, the hunger of the world will remain forever until slowly we have finished up all the resources of food and chaos prevails, or we finish converting the earth into a place where no living thing can survive. This quote by the narrator explains quite well how we are always striving for more and more and never have enough, “The godless are always hungry”(40).

At the end of the story the character, full of emptiness, consumes himself as leading to his own death. The ending I loved, for, Ceres hands a plate, fork and knife, and concludes the story by saying “Bon Appétit”. Will we ever be able to stop this eternal symbiotic nightmare that will take human kind, and all the living things of the world with it, to self destruction? “There can be only one end to such a man… he will destroy himself” (40).