Point of View

Tender is the Flesh is written from the third person limited point of view. This means that the third person narrator’s access is limited to the protagonist Marcos’s perspective. The narrator inhabits Marcos’s consciousness throughout the novel and renders the narrative world the way in which Marcos sees and experiences it. The author establishes this intimate relationship between the narrator and the main character on the opening page of Part I, Chapter 1. The chapter begins: “Carcass. Cut in half. Stunner. Slaughter line. Spray wash. These words appear in his head and strike him. Destroy him. But they’re not just words. They’re the blood, the dens smell, the automation, the absence of thought” (3). Lying in bed trying to sleep, these words “burst in on” Marcos in the night, “catch him off guard” (3). The narrator is thus inhabiting Marcos’s interior and...