Summary

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Summary
Summary (Masterpieces of World Literature, Critical
Edition)
Montaignes age was one of adventure and exploration, and many travelers returned to Europe with tales of
strange and fascinating people elsewhere. During a French expedition to South America in 1557, the explorer
Villegaignon encountered a tribe of cannibals in what was then called Antarctic France but what is now
called Brazil. Some of them returned with the crew. Montaigne not only met one of these cannibals at Rouen
in 1562 but also employed a servant who had spent a dozen years living among them in their native land.
From this firsthand knowledge, Montaigne in Of Cannibals reverses the egocentric European belief in the
superiority of Western culture. Not simple, ignorant, and barbarous as some would insist, cannibals live in
harmony with nature, employ useful and virtuous skills, and enjoy a perfect religious life and governmental
system. Instead, it is the European who has bastardized nature and her works, while the so-called savage lives
in a state of purity. Much like American author Herman Melville, who later chronicled his life among the
cannibals in Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846), Montaigne sees more barbarous behavior among his
immediate neighbors.
As evidence, Montaigne cites everything from language usage to architecture. The cannibals have, he says, no
words for lying, treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy, and other vices. They have no slaves, no distinctions
between rich and poor, and no mania for owning things. They live in a land of plenty, eat only one meal a day,
and spend the whole day dancing. Their religious and ethical beliefs are admirably simple. They believe in the
immortality of the soul, in a kind of heaven and hell, and in divine prophecy. They have, in fact, tribal
prophets who, if they fail to prophesy correctly, are immediately put to the sword, a swift justice that
Montaigne does not condemn, for false prophets should be severely punished. As for their priests, they daily
preach only two virtues: love and courage.
In wars with nations beyond their territory, the cannibals know neither fear nor cowardice even though their
battles often end in bloodshed. Each man brings back the head of an enemy as a trophy and hangs it over the
entrance of his dwelling. The enemy prisoners brought back are slain and eaten, not for nourishment but for
revenge. Such behavior has earned for them the name savages, but Montaigne sees more savagery in the
European practices of torturing or burning aliveand, what is worse, doing it in the name of religion. While
the cannibals clearly violate rules of reasonable behavior, Montaigne concludes, the Europeans surpass them
in every kind of barbarity and cruelty.
There is little doubt that Montaigne romanticizes the noble savage in his essay, as authors were to do for
centuries afterward, but he is one of the first great thinkers to question the Eurocentric view of human
behavior, the notion that the standard for human behavior is white, Christian, and European. While it is
doubtless true that he idealizes the life of Brazilian tribal peoples, nonetheless he sees the dignity, nobility,
intelligence, and harmony of their lives. He forces the readers to confront themselves and their own social
behavior; as Montaigne notes, there is such a distance in character between the cannibals and his audience that
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either the cannibals are savages or his readers are. Montaigne tries hard throughout his essay to find fault with
the cannibals behavior and way of life but can offer only one, slightly humorous, observation: They do not
wear trousers.

Bibliography (Masterpieces of World Literature, Critical

Edition)
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