“The dead you is constantly being rubbed away by the dead me. Your cells fall and flake away, fodder to dust mites and bed bugs. Your droppings support colonies of life that graze on skin and hair no longer wanted. You don’t feel a thing. How could you? All your sensation comes from deeper down, the live places where the dermis is renewing itself, making another armadillo layer. You are a knight in shining armor” (p.123).
In this paragraph at the beginning of “The Skin” section, the narrator presents contrasting images of reproduction and life with death and decay. The idea of a “dead you…[and a] dead me” creates separate entities for the dead versions of both the narrator and Louise (123). As this quote suggests a distinction between the dead and ‘living’ versions of the lovers, the imagery presented seemingly contrasts life with death. This is in part expressed through the idea of “droppings” that “support colonies of life” (123). In addition, the image of “the dermis…renewing itself, making another armadillo layer” further develops the binary of life and death (123). Specifically, the juxtaposition, and in fact integration of these concepts contributes to an overall theme in the novel: the difference between survival and living. The ‘scientific’ language and imagery employed in this text is meant to symbolize ‘survival’, while the aspects of decay, entwined within the processes of reproduction and life, evoke a sense of death.
The narrator’s brief attention to any feeling at all amidst a channeling of medical poetry, is in her/his questioning of Louise’s numbness: “you don’t feel a thing” (123). This lack of feeling appears to be due to the reliance on survival as a form of life, rather than embracing living. In fact, the narrator’s choice to leave Louise was a prioritization of survival rather than life; specifically, she/he chose to leave Louise in order to keep her ‘alive’, while staying with her may have caused a faster physical deterioration, but would have enabled Louise to truly ‘live’, in all the sense of the word. In this passage, the narrator’s partial resentment for this choice becomes clear: survival no longer seems as appealing. The end of the quote reconnects us with the ‘savior image, Louise as a “knight in shining armor” (123). While this theme is pertinent throughout the novel, images of the saved vs. savior binary are developed in particular in the last 30 pages of the novel (159, 160, 162, 190). The last image of the novel specifically, channels the idea of Louise as the ultimate ‘savior’ to the narrator: arriving unexpected in a midst of sunlight (190).