For the most part, “Eight Bites” is not a very fantastical story. Until we learn the consequences of the narrator’s life-changing surgery, it feels as if this story could be set in our own world; plenty of people undergo surgeries to reduce their weight or suppress their appetite, and it’s not completely implausible that a person could only survive on twenty-four bites of food a day. Only when we reach the end of this story does the fantastic element reveal itself: our narrator is now haunted by her own sentient “inner self.” This is a common occurrence in Machado’s stories—they start off normally enough, then throw you for a loop right when you least expect it; “The Husband Stitch” and “The Resident” are two prime examples. “Eight Bites” also reminded me of Steven Millhauser’s “History of a Disturbance,” in which the main character ceases speaking altogether; it is something that feels like it could happen in real life, but also feels just a bit too farfetched to ever actually occur.
While reading “Eight Bites,” I kept trying to guess what the fantastic component of this story would turn out to be, and it got to the point where I was overanalyzing almost every new piece of information, no matter how insignificant it actually was; this is, I think, the sign of a truly exceptional writer–Machado gives you just enough to think that things might not entirely be as they seem, but not enough for you to correctly guess what that fantastic component could be. Another possible interpretation could be that the end result isn’t meant to be the horrific part of this story; rather, it is the fact that our narrator is willing to do anything (including sacrificing her relationship with her daughter) in order to obtain and maintain a specific standard of beauty. In a separate class that I am taking this semester, we learned how monsters in fiction are always metaphorical; in “Eight Bites,” the narrator’s “inner self” is a metaphor for her old self, for all that she has sacrificed in order to get to this point. The true horror of this story comes from the narrator’s own actions and desires, not from her “monster.”
I think the reason the narrator succumbs to the surgery and gets rid of her “old self” is because of her mother and three sisters. Mother’s have such an influence over their daughters. Because she rigidly ate only eight bites, her mentality was passed on to her three eldest daughters. They, too, all believed that they could only be their “true self” if they stopped at eight bites. None of them liked their natural bodies because they weren’t anything like their mother’s. The mother was probably influenced by her own mother who was influenced by her mother, etc. Of course, this mentality is a product of the beauty culture; you can only love yourself if you are thin and svelte. The narrator’s body was like her sister’s and they got rid of their natural look and sang praises of how good they felt after the surgery. The narrator didn’t love her body because her sisters hated theirs; she didn’t feel as though she should love her natural body.
I agree! We are definitely shaped (pun intended) by our mothers and the other women in our lives. The mother had to have an eating disorder. It is amazing what we (women) will do to be accepted or to try and love ourselves.