The Feast of Tantalus: American Abundance and Manufactured Scarcity
Late-stage capitalism, inflation, and poverty in the land of plenty
“He stood in a pool of water, yet could not drink. Over his head hung fruits, yet he could not eat.”
The God of the Empty Cart
I think about Tantalus every time I walk through the grocery store. There he is, reaching for the fruit that always pulls away, bending for the water that always slips just out of reach. There I am, staring at grapes marked eight dollars a pound and pretending that’s normal. The ancient Greeks imagined Tartarus as a place beneath the world, but I’m not sure they ever looked at an American receipt.
We live in the land of plenty, where hunger is a policy choice and suffering is branded as market adjustment. The shelves are full, the warehouses overflowing, yet forty-two million Americans are starving in the middle of a shutdown. Food assistance frozen, benefits withheld, lives dangling on the vine. The punishment of Tantalus wasn’t just hunger. It was the cruelty of proximity.
He could see it. Smell it. Almost taste it.
So can we.
The Supermarket of Suffering
Modern Tartarus has fluorescent lighting and automatic doors. The air smells like plastic wrap and quiet despair. You push your cart past pyramids of cereal boxes and aisles of things you used to afford. Everything gleams with abundance. Everything mocks you.
You tell yourself you’ll buy just what’s on the list. You lie. The bread’s smaller, the milk’s thinner, the price of eggs reads like a ransom note. Inflation, they call it, as if prices float up by divine whim. But the gods behind these shelves have names like Archer Daniels Midland and Kroger Inc. They profit from the dance of denial, keeping the feast visible and the table just out of reach.
Sometimes I watch people pause in front of the meat case. They don’t pick anything up. They just stand there, calculating. Will it be rent or dinner? Electric bill or chicken thighs? Their eyes look exactly like Tantalus’s must have been: hopeful, humiliated, haunted. The fruit gleams beneath perfect lighting, like the golden apples of the gods, priced for immortals.
We think we’re shopping for groceries, but really we’re praying at the altar of the invisible hand.
The Economic Theology of Hunger
Capitalism, for all its polish, is a religion. It promises salvation through scarcity. It teaches that suffering is holy, that those who can’t afford to eat must not have worked hard enough, prayed loud enough, or optimized their budget spreadsheets correctly.
We’ve turned deprivation into moral theater. There are entire networks dedicated to the rituals of excess, where celebrities show off pantries the size of small apartments while the poor line up for canned beans in church basements. The priests of profit keep the faith alive by preaching about efficiency and growth. Their gospel is margin. Their sacrament is markup.
The twin gods of supply and demand still demand their sacrifices daily. They say scarcity is natural, but scarcity sculpted by human hands is not nature. It’s design.
Our gods don’t throw lightning bolts anymore. They smite with earnings reports.
The Sin of the Feast
Tantalus’s sin was pride. He tried to trick the gods by serving them his own son. For that, he was condemned to eternal hunger. Our sin is colder. We starve our neighbors while congratulating ourselves on fiscal responsibility.
During this 2025 shutdown, forty-two million Americans are being starved by spreadsheet. SNAP benefits frozen. Groceries out of reach. Families punished as leverage in political theater. The food exists. The money exists. The cruelty too exists in abundance.
Somewhere tonight, a parent is boiling pasta with no sauce and calling it dinner. The gods must be so proud.
We’ve built a banquet where only the rich may eat. We’ve mistaken austerity for virtue and cruelty for courage. The feast is eternal, but it’s never shared.
I think of the single mother in Kentucky counting coins to feed her children while a senator explains budget constraints into a microphone. I think of the grocery store worker stocking shelves of food she can’t afford. I think of the invisible hands of policy reaching out and pulling the fruit away, again and again.
And I wonder which is the greater sin: Tantalus’s deceit, or our deliberate indifference.
And for those not crushed beneath the feast, there’s another punishment, reaching forever, never full.
The Price of Reaching
The American dream was supposed to be a ladder. Lately, it feels more like a treadmill. We’re told to reach higher, work harder, believe stronger. But the closer we get to the fruit, the farther it drifts.
Reaching has become its own punishment. We take out loans to live, swipe credit to survive, refinance our hunger into manageable monthly payments. Even those with enough are haunted by the fear of falling. Poverty isn’t just a condition anymore. It’s a contagion we’re all taught to fear catching.
I once watched a man at the checkout counter put back his deli meat. Then the bread. Then the milk. By the time he was done, he left with a single can of beans. No tantrum. No complaint. Just quiet calculation, and that strange American shame that confuses hunger with failure. He didn’t look angry. Just empty. The kind of emptiness that doesn’t make a sound.
Tantalus reached for the fruit again and again, knowing it would slip away. He couldn’t stop himself. Neither can we.
Tartarus with Free Parking
Imagine the old Greek underworld as rebranded by American corporations. Tartarus Market. Endless shelves, eternal hunger, and a loyalty program. “Thank you for choosing Tartarus Premium, where your suffering earns you points toward next month’s despair.”
The gates of hell would have a self-checkout line. The water would rise to your chin every time you try to scan your discount code. Somewhere in the distance, a CEO would be calling it innovation.
We’ve managed to turn punishment into entertainment, even luxury. We livestream our excess and call it lifestyle. We post pictures of brunch while millions are skipping meals. We say things like “food insecurity” to soften the horror of hunger. Everything is branded, softened, made palatable, except the reality itself.
And when the water finally rises to your chin, a voice from the intercom says, Thank you for shopping the American way.
A society that calls starvation “budget realignment” deserves its myth. We’re living it already.
Breaking the Curse
The punishment of Tantalus wasn’t eternal because he was unworthy of forgiveness. It was eternal because he refused to change. The same could be said of us.
We keep building systems that recoil from justice the moment we reach for it. We talk about freedom while designing dependence. We hoard wealth and call it merit. We strip away safety nets and call it reform.
Meanwhile, forty-two million people wait for benefits that have been turned off like a light switch. Hunger on demand. Poverty by choice. It’s an experiment in how long a nation can pretend it’s moral while its citizens starve in the shadow of abundance.
Maybe Tartarus isn’t underground. Maybe it’s the system we’ve built above it.
To break the curse, we’d have to stop worshiping the market as god and start honoring the people as sacred. We’d have to measure success not in profit but in fullness. We’d have to look hunger in the eye and call it what it is, a man-made sin.
We built the altar. We crowned the gods. We can tear them down.
The Chorus of the Hungry
If there were a chorus in this modern tragedy, they wouldn’t sing. They’d stand in food bank lines, quiet and tired, waiting for a kindness that should never have to be begged for.
They would chant in the rhythm of hunger and say:
We are surrounded by plenty.
We are starved by policy.
We are punished for being poor.
And the gods would still look down and call it order.
The Curse Rewritten
Tantalus couldn’t change his fate, but we can. The fruit is real. The water is real. So is the machinery that keeps them just out of reach.
We could choose to lower the branches. We could decide that no one goes hungry in a land that grows enough to feed the world ten times over. We could stop confusing cruelty with competence.
But that would require humility, and humility is in short supply. The myth endures because it’s profitable.
A Closing Reflection
I keep thinking of that man in the grocery store. The way he pushed his half-empty cart through the automatic doors and stepped out into the rain. No complaint. No curse. Just resignation. He didn’t look back.
Maybe that’s the final cruelty of the modern Tartarus. Not that the fruit moves away, but that eventually, you stop reaching.
Abundance without access is just hunger dressed for the camera.
America still calls it a success story.
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Further Reading:
The feast of Tantalus...how frightened familiar🙈
"Tarturus Premium"........Holy smokes, Dino!!!