What does the creature represent?

In “Eight Bites,” I believe the creature that haunts the narrator after her surgery represents the physical and emotional parts of herself that she has rejected, repressed, or surgically removed in the process of conforming and becoming skinny. The creature is described as silent, fleshy, and feminine. A grotesque and childlike being that mirrors the narrator’s former body and emotional weight. It’s not just a ghost of her past fat body, but also a manifestation of everything she has been taught to hate or be ashamed of (her hunger, her desires, her softness, and her pain, etc). The creature’s presence sends a message that losing weight won’t erase the psychological scars or societal pressures that are forced upon women. Even though the narrator made her body smaller, she couldn’t run away from or get rid of the guilt and shame she’s been carrying around her whole life from existing in a society that is unkind to women. This is embodied by the haunting creature. The creature may also symbolize the narrator’s unresolved trauma and self-loathing, now externalized and made visible by the removal of the external “imperfections.” It follows her silently, remoinding her that she only “fixed” her appearance but that there is nothing she can do to fix who she really is deep inside.

More widely, the creature can be interpreted by readers as being a reflection of the generational impact of body image issues. The narrator worries about passing down these harmful ideas to her daughter. The creature stands as a warning of what happens when women are taught to equate their worth with thinness or their physical appearance in general. A haunting imagery of what it’s like to be a woman chasing perfection for the sake of being accepted by society only to find out that perfection doesn’t exist and that neither they nor “society” will ever be satisfied when chasing this kind of perfection.

Machado uses the haunting presence of the creature to illustrate the psychological cost of conforming to beauty standards, showing readers that the parts we are told to fix or  eliminate don’t just vanish when we go under the operating table. There is no easy fix to feel better about yourself. These feelings linger silently demanding to be acknowledged just as the creature does.

What roles do themes of detachment and isolation play in the story inventory?

In “Inventory,” the themes of detachment and isolation are very important to the story’s progression and to the narrative. The story is told by following the narrator’s sexual encounters, as she moves around, escaping, she goes through flashbacks or memories of intimate encounters with people. She goes through these encounters as if they are items on a grocery list. This list-like format creates a sense of emotional detachment, as if the narrator is more invested in recording facts than in exploring the feelings she experienced during these encounters. Rather than delving into the deep emotional connections she shared with these people, the narrator often focuses on the sensory details or facts. This sort of suggests an inability or kind of refusal to express intimacy, form it, or maintain it.

This detachment mirrors the larger theme of isolation that is all over the story. As this unnamed and mysterious pandemic spreads and civilization gradually collapses, the narrator becomes increasingly physically and emotionally cut off from the world, or in a way, purposely cuts herself off. The virus serves as both a literal and metaphorical symbol of isolation. In the narrator’s life, people either die or disappear, and relationships with them are broken. In the end, the narrator is confined to a military base, alone and surrounded by uncertainty. Even in earlier, more populated moments of the story, the relationships she describes are often fleeting or emotionally distant, emphasizing a persistent loneliness masked by physical connection. So in a way, the pandemic acts as a way to represent the detachment and isolation the narrator has always felt. It underscores what the narrator has always felt inside. 

During a time when most people crave connection and people to share their struggles with, the narrator actively chooses to isolate herself. Her lists and recounting of past lovers serve as a survival mechanism. These habits of detachment have helped her feel safe in the past and are also perhaps what is keeping her literally alive in this scenario as well. The idea that detachment and isolation are coping mechanisms people use to save themselves from mental anguish is interestingly intertwined with detachment and isolation actually saving the narrator on a physical and medical level. At the end of the story, the woman the narrator lives with gets sick and dies, but she does not. Something I found interesting because I saw it as the narrator being immune to the virus due to her detachment and isolation on an inner level.

       When I began writing my Op-Ed essay, I didn’t know what I wanted to write about for my Op-Ed essay. I was scrolling on Instagram when I stumbled on a video talking about some companies in Europe experimenting with 4-day work weeks. This topic caught my attention very much and I thought it would make a very good concept for an opinion piece. I know that a lot of people in the US, especially those in influential positions, are against paid parental leave and cutting the work week. A lot of members of the older generations think younger people are “lazy” and don’t want to work. So after seeing the video, I did some more research and found out a lot of interesting things that I knew would fit very well into my Op-Ed essay, and that is how I went about finding sources for my essay.

       I started by reading more about the topic. The results of my paper were almost completely different from what I thought they would look like when I first began brainstorming. As I wrote and did more research, my opinions and ideas about the topic changed and evolved. I learned more about the topic, which convinced me even more of why reducing working hours is important. It also introduced the importance of wages and their proportionality to the cost of living.

       I wrote the essay in parts. I began my essay by stating my opinion, then wrote some supporting evidence. I got stuck for a little while, then I researched a little more. I found that taking breaks and reading about my topic got my creative juices flowing and allowed me to get more ideas. So, in general, I wrote in parts and not in one go. I didn’t outline for this paper. But I did categorize the paper into parts and subtopics.

       What I like most about my Op-Ed is that it was effective at highlighting a call to action. I also think my topic was very relatable and relevant. My call to action was also (in my opinion) realistic and something I think is doable. It included a call to action for businesses as well as individuals. I think overall, my paper could appeal to a lot of people. I also believe the evidence I used was convincing. I made good use of pathos, ethos, and logos using statistics, the effects on mental and physical health, and the questionable ethics of capitalism as my main arguments.

       My classmates who gave me feedback on my paper told me that I should focus on the “why?” So, I made sure to edit my paper to incorporate more evidence and argument for why working less is beneficial for not only health but also productivity. I ended up concluding in my essay that working less is beneficial to both the employee and the employer.

       If I had more time, I’d improve my writing style and word choice.

Writing the in-class essay was challenging for me even though I’ve had a lot of practice writing essays in one sitting. I prepared by rereading the story I chose to write about and also by pulling some evidence and quotes that stood out to me from the book while rereading. I chose quotes from the story that I thought I could use to support the points I was making in my essay. I also prepped by writing down thoughts I had about the prompts. I wrote down my claim and supporting points with their respective quotes to match to help me begin my essay. I separated my essay into parts. I sectioned it out so that one paragraph focused on the baby, the other paragraph on Bad and her effect in the narrator and then the last body paragraph about symbolism and what certain things like the baby could’ve stood for in the story to represent the relationship dynamic between the narrator and bad. I had a lot of trouble with time organization. There were a lot of moments when I was frozen and just having a hard time getting anything down, but once I wrote one sentence it was easy to keep going and writing from there. I started panicking a little when I realized that there were only 15 minutes left and that I still had an entire page left to write, but I managed to get the rest of my ideas down in what I believed to be a coherent manner. In the future I think I’d be a little less rigid with the prompt. I think I tried sticking too literally and closely to what the question was asking that I failed to make a really good point about something that was close to what the prompt was asking but not entirely. I would be more abstract with my claim and supporting points in the future.

I really enjoyed leading and being part of discussions led by my classmates. I loved leading the discussion because I studied the story we were assigned very closely and prepared questions about idea I was already knowledgeable about, but once we got up there my classmate’s insights gave me aha moments where I was able to grasp even more concepts and ideas that I didn’t catch when I was thinking about the story on my own. So the exchange of ideas was really helpful and I was able to learn from my classmates. I think the discussion went well. Definitely not the way I was expecting but I think the fact that there was so much to say made it easy to be up there and lead the discussion. On the other hand, I would try to cover more topics and questions if given the chance to do this again. The discussion prepared me for my in class essay by allowing me to see the story from other people’s perspective. Through the discussion I learned new things about the story I didn’t notice myself and also learned about the kind of questions other people had about the story while reading it. This allowed me to find more topics to pull from while writing my essay.