“You have to carry the fire.”
“I don’t know how to.”
“Yes, you do.”
—The Road
Cannibalism. Eating people. Cutting out a person’s heart for your own survival. For some it’s a last resort, for others a way of life.
The Road is a 2006 novel by Cormac McCarthy and a stunningly faithful 2009 film adaptation by John Hillcoat that I have read twice and watched once. We don’t have words for how bleak this story is. A father and son walk the aftermath of an unnamed global disaster; the world is grey, scorched, and nothing but a few humans seem to be alive. The parent and child are scavengers with only a buggy of supplies; almost everyone else they encounter is—or might be—a cannibal. In the midst of this hellscape, the father tries to raise his son and instill values and ethics before his imminent death. You see, throughout the entire story, the father is sick and coughing up blood. It is unspeakably grim.
The father repeatedly tells his young son that “they must carry the fire.” Though there is no vegetation or animal life left on earth, they cannot resort to killing and consuming other people. Carrying the fire is the father insisting that he and his boy remain human in the face of depravity.
Early on in magic it is easy to be a cannibal. You walk alone, typically, the one kid you know who likes sleight of hand. And without guidance you can easily copy someone else’s work as long as you can sort out the method, not knowing that this is unethical. This is especially easy if you have only ever learned half-baked magic from YouTube’s bedroom man-eaters, the ones who “teach” what they themselves haven’t fully learned. This passing on of barely digested remains from one person to the next is less like The Road than The Human Centipede. Woe to you if you find yourself at the end of that chain of fools.