Passage
The Poisoned Apple
Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
Temptation overcomes caution, and one fatal bite answers her worst fear.
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Character
Henri Maheu
Germinal, Émile Zola
A small dependent child turns household poverty into a question of who eats today.
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Place
The Cyclops’ Cave
The Odyssey, Homer
A cave stocked like a farm becomes a trap, because its owner keeps no law of welcome.
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Place
Butcher / Pork Kidney Shop
Ulysses, James Joyce
Bloom's vast day opens over a butcher's counter, with a kidney and a wandering eye.
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Passage
The Bowl's Counsel
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Omar Khayyam
A vessel meant for dust offers a brutal answer to life's oldest question.
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Place
Duchess's kitchen
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
A kitchen where pepper stings, saucepans fly, a baby howls, and a cat only grins.
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Passage
The Spaniard's Prudence
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
Rescue must wait, because saving friends too soon could doom everyone.
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Passage
The Porter's Auspicious Day
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 01, Anonymous / traditional; translated and annotated by Sir Richard Francis Burton
Each lavish purchase deepens the Porter's wonder: what fortune, or danger, awaits him?
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Place
Roman Bandit Hideout
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
In the bandit cave, Danglars finds out what a loaf of bread is really worth.
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Passage
Breakfast Before the Gallows
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
He eats like a condemned man, straining for the footsteps he fears most.
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Object
Food dishes and scraps
Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
How do you feed a brother who no longer eats like a person, and keep loving him?
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Passage
The Cannon Interrupts The Banquet
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas, père
A casual kindness becomes deadly when danger interrupts before anyone understands the poison.
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Object
Sack
King Henry IV, Part 1, William Shakespeare
One fat man, one sweet wine, and a whole philosophy of staying alive.
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Passage
The Hour of the Oven
Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand
A poet must silence his muse when commerce and kitchen demands call.
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Place
Petruchio’s country house
The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare
A new husband turns his own house into a place where hunger, sleeplessness, and denial break his wife.
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Object
Belly fable
Coriolanus, William Shakespeare
Can a clever story about body parts talk starving men out of their anger?
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Passage
The Red Wine Stain
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
A spilled cask turns hunger into prophecy, hinting that violence is already awakening.
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Passage
The Hermit Breaks Rule
Ivanhoe, Walter Scott
A wary knight tests his holy host, and the meal turns into revelation.
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Object
Korobochka’s preserves and jars
Dead Souls, Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol
A widow who counts every jar meets a man buying the dead, and starts haggling.
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Character
The Hummel children
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Hungry children in a cold room turn the March sisters’ Christmas breakfast into an act of love.
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Place
The banquet clearing
The Tempest, William Shakespeare
A feast appears like kindness, then vanishes the moment guilt is named aloud.
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Place
The Try Pots
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
A bowl of chowder, a firm landlady, and the whale trade soaking into everything, even dinner.
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Passage
Starving for a St. Petersburg Suit
The Inspector-General, Nikolai Gogol
Starving and broke, he clings to fantasies of status before humiliation swallows him.
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Object
Brandy and glasses at Fyodor’s table
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A bottle on the table is all Fyodor needs to say the unsayable aloud.
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Place
Camacho’s wedding field
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
One man buys a lavish wedding; a poorer rival steals the bride with a lie.
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Place
The Strophades
The Aeneid, Virgil
A meal on these islands ends in filth, a curse, and a warning about Italy.
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Object
Liniment-flavored cake
Anne of Green Gables, L. M. Montgomery
Anne wants to impress the minister's wife, and reaches for the wrong bottle.
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Object
The Gruel Bowl
Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
One empty bowl, one boy asking for more, and a room that treats it as treason.
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Passage
Starving Over A Rat
Salammbô, Gustave Flaubert
Starvation strips discipline away, and the army begins devouring its own humanity.
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Passage
Explosion of Life
My Ántonia, Willa Cather
Jim is overwhelmed by Ántonia's fierce abundance, and by how much life she holds.
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