Giacomo Kyle asked:

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4 years ago
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loucifer

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Ian I just thought it was an indication that "everyone has their price". He found the treatment of the heads for the purpose of eating meat unjustifiable, but worth it if he meant he could have a child.

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Grace

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Gayle Gordon I actually believe that he was slowly going mad. Seeing the overturned truck and the scavengers devouring people right in the street pushed him over. It was out of character for his normal self, but by the end he was not normal. Showing that his niece and nephew, who were raised in that society, are a couple of little psychopaths was kind of an indicator to me of the way he was going. The dream, where Sergio took his heart out of his chest and Cecilia replaced it with a stone was foreshadowing to him losing his last vestige of humanity.

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Miriam Dix I just finished listening to this book and was similarly taken aback by his 180 at the end. But, after a bit of thought, it is truly a reflection of conformity - and how easily we do it under the watchful eye of others. When it was just him and Jasmine, he treated her like she was (or he tried to, I think) - a human. But once Cecelia came into the picture, he conformed and he was back to treating her inhumanely - just like everyone else.

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Corinne Greenberg

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Tiffany Mcdougal I think it's suppose to parallel how people treat animals. Marcus doesn't like the torture or cruelty towards the head, but in the end they are just head to him. Like how people will eat farm raise meat over factory farming because it's more humane to them. I don't think he ever really thought of Jasmine as human, more as a pet. He was never a moral person. He even says himself that he misses meat. He use to eat it.

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Courtney

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taylor I think, with that final line - it's a full circle moment back to a quote I had highlighted on my kindle - “After all, since the world began, we’ve been eating each other. If not symbolically, then we’ve been literally gorging on each other. The Transition has enabled us to be less hypocritical.”

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Ur Mom

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Jennifer

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Susana

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Liam Ostermann I think it made perfect sense within the whole drift of the novel - if he really was different, if he saw any of the heads, even Jasmine, as human then he couldn't continue living within the world as it was. No one could possibly have such beliefs and continue functioning in a society like that. Nor could they bring a child into it if they really believed the world they lived was based on a obscenity.

Or maybe they could. Maybe the author is making us look at what we accept, at least those of us who are the lucky per cent at the top of the economic pyramid, the vast numbers who live and die in lives of appalling want and suffering. We ignore it - once it was far away in 'poor' countries that we sent charity to; now it is in shanty towns on our cities streets. We ignore and get on with our lives, occasionally disturbed but most of the time we ignore and have plenty of reasons why we can and should. This novel just tears off illusions and excuses back to first causes and actions. Like all good dystopian literature should.

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Jennifer Ferencz

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Lisiewiczka

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Philip

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⁺˚*･༓☾ E R I K A ☽༓･*˚⁺ I agree, I didn't expect this. I think it would be super cool, though, if there was a sequel exploring the child growing up and raising suspicion due to the fact that he doesn't look much like his mother.

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Eden

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Delirious Disquisitions

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[I had to go back and reread some of the passages to make sense of the ending. And here is what I make of it: Marcos never once looks at the “head” as anything human. Rather, it is the readers who still perceive the “heads” as humans. So all of Marcos’ actions, telegraphed through that lens, are seen as acts of compassion and love for a fellow human being. When it's not that at all. Marco never looks at the “head” as anything other than a pet, a fertile incubator for breeding, and a vessel for his child. In her, he finds some semblance of hope for a better future in which his child would be alive and well and fix the hole that his son’s death had left behind. All his yearning, longing, and concern is directed at the growing fetus in Jasmine’s stomach. He is always hugging her around the stomach or touching her stomach in some way whenever he shows any kind of intimacy towards her.

He also enjoys her company in the same ways he and his father once enjoyed the company of their dogs. He interacts with her as one might with an intelligent pet or cattle. He names her, teaches her the basics of survival so she can stay at home alone and not hurt herself (or his child) when he’s away; he teaches her to eat and drink, use the bathroom, lets her watch tv for amusement, feeds and clothes her, pets her head to reassure her. Marcos never teaches her how to be independent like a human who can survive beyond these four walls he keeps her tied to: he never teaches her to read as he thinks it's pointless “if she can't speak and will neve er be part of society that sees her only as an edible product.” It is a sentiment he also agrees with.

Marcos repeatedly says how, unlike his father, he never had any issues adapting to the “Transition”. As a post-transition man he never has any problem differentiating between humans and “heads”. In fact, all of his actions towards Jasmine has a precursor, a knowledge bank of information regarding the care, breeding, and processing of FGPs that he draws from: whether it's the post rape cleanup of one of the FGPs where he learns the “heads” cannot talk talk but can be bread, or the discussion about their fertility (juxtaposed with his wife’s low egg count), or the description of how one of his colleague is able to sooth the “heads” by hugging them from the back and petting their heads, or the consistent foreshadowing of the method of slaughter (hit the head with a blunt club before slitting the throat), etc. There are cautionary tales of men falling in love with the heads and getting arrested for their crimes. Marcos carefully catalogs all of this information for when he finally sleeps with her. He even has violent, messy, raw sex with Spanel before he touches Jasmine.

The line “she has the human look of a domesticated animal" when he kills her in the end is likely because she has done her part in birthing his child because of the way she reacts, desperately reaching out to the child as he's being taken away. In that moment, he sees her as a domesticated pet that's grown human-like characteristics (still not quite seeing her as human). It's a direct comparison to his father’s attachment to the dogs and how he lost his mind when he had to put them down. But unlike his father, Marcos has no qualms about getting rid of Jasmine once she’s served her purpose. He never envisions a future with her even though he did entertain thoughts of running away from everything with her (while she was pregnant). Notice how he always refers to the child as “his child” or “his son” and finally “ours” when he holds the child up to his wife. He never once acknowledges Jasmine as the mother.

I think, more than the dystopian horror of a world post-transition, it's Maarcos’s actions that really drive home the horror of living in such an environment. Marcos is a fully post-transition human where he completely assimilates to the divide in species between humans and “heads” as others. As horrific as it is, it's the only way of survival in a broken world where there is no room for morals and ethics. As for his lack of compassion, I believe that there are all kinds of sufferings in the world, and not everyone has the capacity to feel empathy on a universal scale. Sometimes, personal tragedies can feel so very all encompassing that it selfishly trumps all other emotions. Marco’s personal grief over his aging father, his eventual passing, the death of his son and the dissolution of his own marriage means that he’s fully alienated himself from the larger society. His isolation and voluntary exile is like a bubble where none of the horrors from his everyday life can touch him. He is desensitized to it all and fully subscribed to the “us” versus “them” mentality. Marcos never looks at Jasmine as human, he has the capacity to feel for her suffering. He takes care of her as a farmer tenderly takes care of his cattle, right before he cradles her body, and slits her throat for food to feed his family. (hide spoiler)]

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