Having barely escaped this danger, our attention was now directed to the dreadful imminency of another; that of absolute starvation. Our whole stock of provision had been swept overboard in spite of all our care in securing it; and seeing no longer the remotest possibility of obtaining more, we gave way both of us to despair, weeping aloud like children, and   neither of us attempting to offer consolation to the other.  Such weakness can scarcely be conceived, and to those who have never been similarly situated will, no doubt, appear unnatural; but it must be remembered that our intellects were so entirely disordered by the long course of privation and terror to which we had been subjected, that we could not justly be considered, at that period, in the light of rational beings.

From “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” by Edgar Allan Poe

In a detailed brilliant prose, Edgar Allan Poe provides a succinct description of how absolute starvation changes the human mind, the despair that people suffer when they are exposed to extreme privation.  Allan Poe had been a sailor and probably heard about the misfortunes that had afflicted some of his  fellow crewmen. An English proverb states: “Two in distress may sorrow less,” but this does not apply in the case of starvation. A Spanish saying is more accurate: “Mal the todos, consuelo de tontos”—“When misfortune strikes us all, only the fool find consolation in the fact that the mishap affects everyone.”