We're Quite Particular About Those With Whom We Break Bread

Always and never are not words that have much meaning in literary study. For one thing, as soon as something seems to always be true, some wise guy will come along and write something to prove that it’s not. Let’s consider journeys. Sometimes the quest fails or is not taken up by the protagonist. Moreover, is every trip really a quest? I’m sure that the same is true in writing. Sometimes plot requires that a writer get a character from home to work and back again. That said, when a character hits the road, we should start to pay attention, just to see if, you know, something’s going on there. The great man responded simply that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I don’t really care if the story is true or not. Still, it is equally true that just as cigars may be just cigars, so sometimes they are not. Same with meals in life and, of course, in literature. Sometimes a meal is just a meal, and eating with others is simply eating with others.

Is There Something I Should Know?

More often than not, though, it’s not. While that meaning is very important, it is not the only one. Nor, for that matter, does Christianity have a lock on the practice. Nearly every religion has some liturgical or social ritual involving the coming together of the faithful to share sustenance. In fact, literary versions of communion can interpret the word in quite a variety of ways. One generally invites one’s friends to dinner, unless one is trying to get on the good side of enemies or employers. We’re quite particular about those with whom we break bread. We may not, for instance, accept a dinner invitation from someone we don’t care for. As with any convention, this one can be violated. A tribal leader or Mafia don, say, may invite his enemies to lunch and then have them killed. In most areas, however, such behavior is considered very bad form. Generally, eating with another is a way of saying, I’m with you, I like you, we form a community together.

Hurts Like Heaven

And that is a form of communion. So too in literature. And that reason has to do with how characters are getting along. Or not getting along. Come on, food is food. What can you say about fried chicken that you haven’t already heard, said, seen, thought? To put characters, then, in this mundane, overused, fairly boring situation, something more has to be happening than simply beef, forks, and goblets. So what kind of communion? And what kind of result can it achieve? Any kind you can think of. While it doesn’t feel particularly important thematically and, moreover, it’s as far from traditional notions of communion as we can get, it nevertheless constitutes a shared experience. What else is the eating about in that scene except devouring the other’s body? Think of it as a consuming desire. There were still taboos in film in the early sixties. When those two finish swilling ale and slurping on drumsticks and sucking fingers and generally wallowing and moaning, the audience wants to lie back and smoke. But what is this expression of desire except a kind of communion, very private, admittedly, and decidedly not holy? I want to be with you, you want to be with me, let us share the experience.

Turn The Lights Out When You Leave

How about a slightly more sedate example? He may fail, but he gets the chance. It’s the Code of the West. When our unnamed narrator reveals to us from the first moment that a blind man, a friend of his wife’s, is coming to visit, we’re not surprised that he doesn’t like the prospect at all. We know immediately that our man has to overcome disliking everyone who is different. And by the end he does, when he and the blind man sit together to draw a cathedral so the blind man can get a sense of what one looks like. To do that, they have to touch, hold hands even, and there’s no way the narrator would have been able to do that at the start of the story. Every coach I ever had would say, when we faced a superior opposing team, that they put on their pants one leg at a time, just like everybody else. What those coaches could have said, in all accuracy, is that those supermen shovel in the pasta just like the rest of us. Or in Carver’s story, cube steak. What about the dope they smoke afterward? Passing a joint doesn’t quite resemble the wafer and the chalice, does it? But thinking symbolically, where’s the difference, really? Please note, I am not suggesting that illicit drugs are required to break down social barriers. On the other hand, here is a substance they take into their bodies in a shared, almost ritualistic experience. Once again, the act says, I’m with you, I share this moment with you, I feel a bond of community with you. It may be a moment of even greater trust. What about when they don’t? What if dinner turns ugly or doesn’t happen at all? A different outcome, but the same logic, I think. It happens all the time on television shows. Two people are at dinner and a third comes up, quite unwished for, and one or more of the first two refuse to eat. They place their napkins on their plates, or say something about losing their appetite, or simply get up and walk away. Immediately we know what they think about the interloper. What if we see two people having dinner, then, but one of them is plotting, or bringing about the demise of the other? In that case, our revulsion at the act of murder is reinforced by our sense that a very important propriety, namely that one should not do evil to one’s dinner companions, is being violated. The mother tries and tries to have a family dinner, and every time she fails. This wonderful story is centered around a dinner party on the Feast of the Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas.