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lizaliza5 's review for:
Tender Is the Flesh
by Agustina Bazterrica
This book is really a special experience.
check the content warnings before you read
the ending really makes you think about what the fuck you just read. Because we feel like our world is so different from this world, we sense Marcos distancing himself from other people in this world and we think he is like us. We think he thinks like we think. In the beginning he seems horrified and disgusted by humanity and the fact that he has to work in the slaughterhouse to make a living. We get a sense of who he used to be before the Transition. He even wishes that he could feel nothing for the human beings slaughtered. His father tethers him to the illusion of the world that existed before. But throughout the book he gets broken, loses his resistance and leans into the cruelty of the society (the "sex" scene with Spanel, seeing the hunting and eating the fingers, seeing the puppies being killed, the laboratory visit, the death of his dad) but we don't fully realize what's happening until the last page.
There is a big question about whether he truly cared for Jasmine. It gets into a whole philosophical question about what, if anything, separates humans and animals. From beginning to end, he expresses love for animals and hatred for humans. It could be that he loved Jasmine when he could see her as an animal, like his favorite dairy cow or a loveable dog. But when he saw how she reached for her baby, he realized that she is a human being and felt disdain.
Or it could be that I was tricked into thinking he cared for Jasmine, and there are indicators that he was really only concerned about the baby. maybe he only used what he learned on the job to earn her trust and make her comfortable enough to have a healthy baby that he could keep for himself. maybe the forbidden act at the end of the first part was not having lustful feelings for Jasmine, and making the baby as an accidental consequence, but really the forbidden act was purposely impregnating her to produce a baby. He seemed to think she didn't have the ability to think. Maybe he always planned to kill her in the end after the baby was born.
Or maybe he went back and forth, because he did dream about running away with Jasmine and starting a life with her. Maybe in the beginning he felt real fondness for her. But then as he became apathetic to the dystopia he lives and participates in, he accepted the new reality with no tether to the past world. Maybe he realized that the world where humans are farmed, hunted, experimented on, and eaten, is really no different from the previous world (where this was MOSTLY only done to non-human animals), and humans are no different from other animals. Maybe he killed Jasmine because he could, to avoid the complication, because her existence stood in the way of the only thing he really wanted which was to have a child. He no longer resisted the insanity he lived in and was rewarded with the simplicity of not caring and getting to live a normal simple life in society.
but that last line!!! he answers why, but what does it really mean?? the switch from she to it, from Jasmine back to the female. and then that CRAZY last sentence. did he say that because he didnt like how human she looked? because he hates humanity? or because he was irritated that a creature like her would dare to look so human, because he's embraced the illusion that the "heads" are not people in the way he and his wife are?
But at the end of the day, what is a person??
this is one of the most thoughtfully written books ive ever read.
a lot of the things they do to people in this book are not new, they are things people have done to other people throughout history, including during the chattel slavery of Africans and their descendants in the Americas, lynching, global european colonization, the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the American "War on Terror", and many many more such cases.
generally, this level of normalized cruelty and using language to separate human beings from the IDEA of how humans should be treated is still used constantly to justify unimaginably cruel realities of today, such as the propaganda we are bombarded with attempting to justify Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people, to name only one example. And that's just what people do to other people.
If we include what we call "animals" into the conversation, it gets more complicated. we tend to find the graphic cruelty in this book appalling BECAUSE it is happening to human beings, but just look around and see how easily people can be tricked into being complacent and even embracing and finally willfully participating in evil against other people. What we do to animals is so normalized that we need "extreme" comparisons like in this book to see it for what it is. am i comparing factory farming to slavery and genocide and saying that everyone should be vegan? no. but this book really made me take a step back and see that everywhere i look, throughout the history of our “civilization” , in every corner of the world, every level of society, it's just immeasurable cruelty all at the hands of human beings. And the solution many have found to deal with this despair is exactly what Marcos might have done: to be complacent in exchange for a uncomplicated life.
check the content warnings before you read
There is a big question about whether he truly cared for Jasmine. It gets into a whole philosophical question about what, if anything, separates humans and animals. From beginning to end, he expresses love for animals and hatred for humans. It could be that he loved Jasmine when he could see her as an animal, like his favorite dairy cow or a loveable dog. But when he saw how she reached for her baby, he realized that she is a human being and felt disdain.
Or it could be that I was tricked into thinking he cared for Jasmine, and there are indicators that he was really only concerned about the baby. maybe he only used what he learned on the job to earn her trust and make her comfortable enough to have a healthy baby that he could keep for himself. maybe the forbidden act at the end of the first part was not having lustful feelings for Jasmine, and making the baby as an accidental consequence, but really the forbidden act was purposely impregnating her to produce a baby. He seemed to think she didn't have the ability to think. Maybe he always planned to kill her in the end after the baby was born.
Or maybe he went back and forth, because he did dream about running away with Jasmine and starting a life with her. Maybe in the beginning he felt real fondness for her. But then as he became apathetic to the dystopia he lives and participates in, he accepted the new reality with no tether to the past world. Maybe he realized that the world where humans are farmed, hunted, experimented on, and eaten, is really no different from the previous world (where this was MOSTLY only done to non-human animals), and humans are no different from other animals. Maybe he killed Jasmine because he could, to avoid the complication, because her existence stood in the way of the only thing he really wanted which was to have a child. He no longer resisted the insanity he lived in and was rewarded with the simplicity of not caring and getting to live a normal simple life in society.
but that last line!!! he answers why, but what does it really mean?? the switch from she to it, from Jasmine back to the female. and then that CRAZY last sentence. did he say that because he didnt like how human she looked? because he hates humanity? or because he was irritated that a creature like her would dare to look so human, because he's embraced the illusion that the "heads" are not people in the way he and his wife are?
But at the end of the day, what is a person??
this is one of the most thoughtfully written books ive ever read.
a lot of the things they do to people in this book are not new, they are things people have done to other people throughout history, including during the chattel slavery of Africans and their descendants in the Americas, lynching, global european colonization, the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the American "War on Terror", and many many more such cases.
generally, this level of normalized cruelty and using language to separate human beings from the IDEA of how humans should be treated is still used constantly to justify unimaginably cruel realities of today, such as the propaganda we are bombarded with attempting to justify Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people, to name only one example. And that's just what people do to other people.
If we include what we call "animals" into the conversation, it gets more complicated. we tend to find the graphic cruelty in this book appalling BECAUSE it is happening to human beings, but just look around and see how easily people can be tricked into being complacent and even embracing and finally willfully participating in evil against other people. What we do to animals is so normalized that we need "extreme" comparisons like in this book to see it for what it is. am i comparing factory farming to slavery and genocide and saying that everyone should be vegan? no. but this book really made me take a step back and see that everywhere i look, throughout the history of our “civilization” , in every corner of the world, every level of society, it's just immeasurable cruelty all at the hands of human beings. And the solution many have found to deal with this despair is exactly what Marcos might have done: to be complacent in exchange for a uncomplicated life.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Cannibalism, Murder, Pregnancy