Interpretation of literary

The Cannibals 
Stephen Heym 
Pop was a dreamer, in a way. He would start speaking on a subject that 
touched something in his heart, and he would spin it out for hours on 
end, and he would make it sound wonderful. He would sit in the rocker 
next to the window and sway back and forth, talking all the while. The 
chair had a slight squeak, and the ashes from his cigarette would drop on 
his lap. 
Mom was different. She was a worrier. She tried to save money. She 
became depressed every time the few dollars she managed to lay aside 
had to be used — a bottle of expensive medicine, or the repair bill for 
the boiler in the cellar that hadn't worked right from the day they made 
their first payment, for new pants for Jimrnie who could rip through a 
pair as if they were made of cheesecloth. 
She was always looking into the future and finding it bleak. The house 
in which they lived — a shack it was, but the real estate agent called it a 
bungalow—would pretty nearly fall down next winter. And Pete 

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157 
Marconi, who had provided Pop with a job, would soon die of apoplexy 
the way he drank and ate and carried on, and then where would she and 
Pop be? And that Jimmie had gone and joined the Army at the age of 
seventeen instead of being able to go through school, would surely end 
in no good. 
Pop would listen to her patiently, exactly as he had done when they both 
were young and not married. He would wail tiii she had exhausted her 
store of glumncss, and take whatever it wa? that worried her at the 
moment arid twist it a little and consider it in a different light, and make 
it all look quite hopeful. The house hadn't fallen down last winter, had 
it? With patching up here or there, it wouldn't collapse this winter, 
either. Pete Marconi wasn't a powerful man in a town and a politician for 
nothing. He could affort the very best doctors, couldn't he? If the 
doctors didn't worry about Pete's whisky and beer, why should she? As 
for Jimmie — the Army would teach him discipline and a craft; maybe 
radar; maybe some other trade that would come in handy in civilian life. 
Meanwhile, Jimmie was seeing the world — Tokyo, with the Geisha 
girls, and the old temples, and all the people talking a kind of bird 
language. And Pop was off, this time on the subject of Japan. 
Perhaps, he was right, Mom would think tiredly. Hadn't it always 
worked out, somehow? They had always managed to have something 
to eat, and clothes to wear, and a roof over (heir heads. And during the 
war when Hickam and Hickam opened that big hush-hush plant down 
the river, outside of town, Pop had gotten himself a fine job there. The 
work hadn't been too hard for him, and the pay had been good, and she 
had been able to save some money every week. Now the money was 
gone, of course; Pop was back checking meters for the Gas and Power 
Company and running political errands for Pete Marconi so as to he 
perm Hied to keep that job. And Jirnmie — hadn't he written her that his 
outfit was definitely not going to be shipped to Korea, and that even if it 
was, they weren't sending anybody below eighteen into the battjo lines? 
Mom would sigh. Things eould be worse. She would let Pop go on 
talking nonsense about Japan, the butt of his cigarette burning 
dangerously close to his fingers. She loved this man, just because he 
refused to be beaten by life and could Jose himself in his dreams. He 
made her forget the feeling of being horribly bewildered in a world too 
hard and too dangerous for the both of them. 
Pop came up the porch steps and into the house. He threw his hat and 
coat on the table in the hall and strode into the kitchen. "Mom!" 

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158 
His buoyant voice made her turn quickly. She saw his expression and 
knew that something — great and exciting had happened to him "Guess 
what!" he demanded. "Jimmie!" Jimmie's coming home!" 
For a moment, his face tightened. "Nothing like that, he said. I was out 
checking meters all day, how could I have heard from Jimmie?" 
"No, you couldn't" she agreed, "And there's been no more mail from 
him". 
He didn't like her concentration on the boy. It was all right for her to 
think .of Jimmie, but not to the exclusion of everything else, not to the 
exclusion of himself and the good news he was bringing, He forced his 
face to beam once more. "Mom! There's going to be a telegram!" 
She wiped her hands on her apron and sat down on the kitchen chair "A 
telegram? From whom? About what?" 
He looked at the gray streaks in her hair, at the skin of her face that hung 
too loosely over her bones, at the worry lines around her eyes and her 
mouth. All the way home he had been planning his tactics; how he 
would break the news to her, how he would hint first and'speak in 
puzzles and tickle her curiosity until she asked him to let her have the 
whole story. But now he knew that he couldn't go about it by kidding 
her. 
Gently, he laid his hanH n" 
Vi
"- '""