\u201cThe 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\u2019t 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\u201d (p.123).<\/p>\n
In this paragraph at the beginning of \u201cThe Skin\u201d section, the narrator presents contrasting images of reproduction and life with death and decay. The idea of a \u201cdead you\u2026[and a] dead me\u201d creates separate entities for the dead versions of both the narrator and Louise (123). As this quote suggests a distinction between the dead and \u2018living\u2019 versions of the lovers, the imagery presented seemingly contrasts life with death. This is in part expressed through the idea of \u201cdroppings\u201d that \u201csupport colonies of life\u201d (123). In addition, the image of \u201cthe dermis…renewing itself, making another armadillo layer\u201d 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 \u2018scientific\u2019 language and imagery employed in this text is meant to symbolize \u2018survival\u2019, while the aspects of decay, entwined within the processes of reproduction and life, evoke a sense of death.
\nThe narrator\u2019s brief attention to any feeling at all amidst a channeling of medical poetry, is in her\/his questioning of Louise\u2019s numbness: \u201cyou don\u2019t feel a thing\u201d (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\u2019s choice to leave Louise was a prioritization of survival rather than life; specifically, she\/he chose to leave Louise in order to keep her \u2018alive\u2019, while staying with her may have caused a faster physical deterioration, but would have enabled Louise to truly \u2018live\u2019, in all the sense of the word. In this passage, the narrator\u2019s partial resentment for this choice becomes clear: survival no longer seems as appealing. The end of the quote reconnects us with the \u2018savior image, Louise as a \u201cknight in shining armor\u201d (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 \u2018savior\u2019 to the narrator: arriving unexpected in a midst of sunlight (190).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThe 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\u2019t feel a thing. How could you? All your sensation comes from deeper down, … Continue reading dead you, dead me<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93618],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}