Tender Is the Flesh

Content Warning: The source text includes graphic depictions of cannibalism, sexual assault, mass human suffering, incarceration, misogynistic violence (including reproductive violence), and death by suicide.

As the protagonist, Marcos Tejo provides the lens through which the novel’s events take shape. Although the narration is given in third person, its contents are limited to Tejo’s knowledge and perspective. As the novel opens, he is reeling from the loss of his child as well as a temporary separation from his wife. His son’s death affects him profoundly; among other things, he stops eating meat, showing that he is sensitive and conflicted. As Tejo struggles to hold on to a sense of meaning and purpose in his life, he maintains contact with his ailing father, though this provides little comfort to him. Tejo finds his work as a manager at a meat processing plant not only unfulfilling but also unsettling, as he can’t shake the feeling that he is enabling what amounts to murder. As he reflects to himself, “Teaching to kill is worse than killing” (4). Paradoxically, Tejo initially lacks the killing instinct. Following the arrival of the female FGP, later known as Jasmine, Tejo realizes that he is “incapable” of killing her.