Theme of Cannibalism in "Coriolanus"

The plebeians and the aristocracy of Rome in “Coriolanus” each feel the other party is trying to eliminate them; this hostility is depicted is in the theme of cannibalism. We immediately hear the commoners’ cannibalistic sentiments about the aristocracy in the play’s opening scene when a citizen says about the aristocracy “If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there’s all the love they bear us” (1.1. 82-4). When Marcius (later known as Coriolanus) later enters in this scene, he argues the commoners are actually their own threat and it’s indeed the aristocracy that keeps them from devouring each other, Marcius asks “You cry against the noble Senate, who/Under the gods, keep you in awe, which else/Would feed on one another?” (1.1. 185-7). Yet, just as the wars are a threat to consume the plebeians, the wars are also eating Marcius; Brutus says about Marcius “The present wars devour him” (1.1. 259).
Menenius offers us a moderate view of the hostilities between these estates of the commoners and aristocracy when he tells the belly fable. Here, he describes Rome as a body in which the Senate is the belly that nourishes the limbs, like the commoners. Yet we see Menenius offer us his private insight about the plebeians’ relationship with the aristocratic Marcius when tells Brutus and Sicinius “Ay, to devour him, as the hungry plebeians would the noble Marcius” (2.1. 9-10). Ultimately, we see Marcius as the pharmakos of this social conflict when he is murdered at the play’s end. While it is not the plebeians that eliminate Marcius here, they contribute to his demise. Just as Marcius saves many Roman plebeians from elimination when he stops his Volsican army from waging war on Rome, it is ironically Marcius’ refusal to wage war that leads to his demise; war does not consume Marcius, peace does.


Matt Sigel, Waldo (Section A)