37 pages • 1 hour read
Michael CrichtonEaters Of The Dead
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1976A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Taboo and Cultural Exchange
Ahmad travels far from his homeland and discovers the nature of life at the boundaries of society and civilization. Crichton uses Ahmad’s character arc to explore the nature of taboo between cultures and the possibility of cultural exchange, as the protagonist becomes increasingly accustomed to unfamiliar cultural standards. Ahmad is forced to leave Baghdad for violating his own social norms, yet he remains deeply attached to these norms at first. The Turkish tribes are strange and dangerous in Ahmad’s view, as they do not operate by the laws of Baghdad. As he travels further north, Ahmad discovers that the Norsemen’s culture is even further removed from his expectations, and the boundaries of social convention are moved constantly forward. Even as Ahmad is exposed to new cultures with new rules, the common feature of these societies is that the inhabitants adhere to their internal codes and laws. Ahmad witnesses the Norsemen responding to taboo within their own community, expressing their disgust with the dishonorable Rothgar and expressing shock and fear at cannibalism, even as they practice slavery and embrace violence. The more time Ahmad spends with the Norsemen, the more he realizes that they are not uncivilized, they simply operate according to a different set of civilizational principles. What Ahmad once saw as taboo has been transformed into a cultural exchange.
By contrast, the cannibalistic, child-murdering wendol never evolve beyond taboo. They are representatives of a chaotic, transgressive world which is not bound by rules, and, as is suggested by the Editor, may not even be entirely human. In Ahmad’s view, the wendol have no redeeming features. They exist outside of society as embodiments of the horror of the unknown, an expression of Ahmad’s fear of total social breakdown. The more Ahmad learns about the wendol, the more he values the structures and laws of a society which exists within the walls of a settlement, even if those laws differ greatly from his own point of reference.
Crichton complicates notions of cultural norms and perspective through his metafictional strategies, as well. As Ahmad critiques the Norsemen, so the Editor critiques Ahmad’s manuscript, offering corrections and revisions from a modern point of view. The Editor is able to consider the wendol with greater nuance, facilitated by even greater cultural remove. Scientific and anthropological context become another layer of cultural norm, as Crichton brings antiquity into conversation with the present through his dual narrators.
History, Myth, and Intertextuality
Eaters of the Dead is presented as a recovered text, annotated by a fictional Editor. Ahmad’s original account of his journey with the Norse warriors is translated from Arabic and pieced together from disparate and often incomplete sources—all heavily fictionalized or invented by Crichton. Though Ahmad is the narrator, his words have passed through several layers of interpretation before reaching the reader, having been translated, reassembled, or taken from citations in other texts. As a result, Crichton creates tension between Ahmad’s eyewitness account and the unfolding narrative of the novel. This tension operates as a theme in the novel, where the reader is never quite sure of the truth of Ahmad’s version of events. The more mystical and strange elements of the story may be due to a reporting error, a mistranslation, or a missing part of the original text. Or, the story may be legitimately supernatural. The nature of the text means that Ahmad’s story creates a sense of uncanniness and uneasiness: reality is constructed, questioned, and disassembled in real time, with the reader never quite certain what is real, what is fake, and what has been misinterpreted over time.
Ahmad’s perspective is important as he mirrors the reader’s unfamiliarity with Norse culture. Supernatural occurrences which are unremarkable for the Norsemen are astonishing to Ahmad. Ahmad fully admits that he knows nothing about Norse culture, so the audience learns alongside him. Furthermore, Ahmad attempts to translate words and concepts which he only faintly understands. His perspective is intriguing but inflected by the unreliability of his knowledge of events and his lack of familiarity with his subject matter. Ahmad’s outsider status in the Norse community lends a mystical incredulity to everything he sees, and his narrative often unfolds in the style of myth despite his attempts to accurately record history. Further complicating the relationship between myth, history, and fiction, this unique narrative perspective is used to retell the epic poem Beowulf. An abstracted version of the plot of Beowulf is portrayed from Ahmad’s perspective, in which the Norse warriors battle against a monstrous evil. As a result, Eaters of the Dead is a retelling of an old folklore which itself was retold, adapted, and altered with each retelling. Ahmad’s perspective creates a unique version of the story which nevertheless operates within the folkloric tradition of Norse mythology and storytelling. Like Ahmad himself, the novel wrestles with an unfamiliar culture but gradually adapts to and internalizes its traditions.
Cultural Definitions of Honor and Shame
Ahmad’s experiences with the Norse warriors teach him about their interpretations of honor and shame. These concepts are vital to both Norse culture and Ahmad himself, and the different interpretations of honor become a recurring theme throughout the book. Ahmad is exiled from his homeland because he brings into question the honor of a merchant’s wife. His interpretation of an honorable existence is based on religious devotion and etiquette. In his homeland, Ahmad does not need to fight to prove his honor, nor does he believe that combat is an essential part of day-to-day life. For Ahmad, honor is a positive motivator and living in an honorable fashion are ways in which he can become an esteemed member of the community and win the approval of his God.
To the Norsemen, honor is achieved through battle. They pray to a variety of gods, but they do not trust them. Instead, honor emerges from within an individual. Buliwyf practices a strict code of honor which calls on him to assist Rothgar even though he is putting his own life in danger. This self-sacrificial sense of honor baffles Ahmad, who views Buliwyf and the other Norsemen as brutes. However, Ahmad develops an appreciation for the comradery and the dedication that are created by their code of honor. Their refusal to show fear, their determination to prove themselves in battle, and their willingness to die for their friends are admirable traits in Ahmad’s view. The theme of honor is explored by Ahmad coming to understand the intricacies of Norse culture, and the ways in which honor is defined by cultural, rather than objective, terms.
Ahmad’s primary negative motivation is guilt. If he fails to pray to Allah or if he transgresses, then he feels guilty about his actions. For the Norsemen, a failure to act in an honorable fashion creates a sense of shame. In the context of the novel, guilt is an external motivator which is pressed on to Ahmad by society while shame is an internal motivation which the Norse warriors feel within themselves and will do anything to avoid. Ahmad slowly learns to navigate this shame while abandoning the guilt he feels for failing to act in a devout manner. Ahmad’s cultural acclimation is shown when he stops feeling guilty about his actions and begins to feel ashamed for his inaction instead.
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