Dreams vs family 

Carmen Maria Machado’s work, “Eight Bites”, is a story of an unnamed woman the narrator, and her journey to achieve her dream body and live up to the family tradition of eating eight bites but this does come with a challenge. Sigmund Freud was an Australian Neurologist and founder of Psyco-analysis and is known for his work “Five Lectures on Pyscho-Analysis”. Carmen Maria Machado’s work, “Eight Bites,” tells us how traditions can destroy family dynamics through the theory of Phallic in Sigmund Freud’s Psycho-Sexual stages of development. 

Admiring a person is completely normal whether it’s for how a person acts, popularity, wealth or other reasons. The main protagonist feels the same way but towards her mother. “It didn’t come from our mother, who always looked normal, not hearty or curvy or Rubenesque or Midwestern or voluptuous, just normal. She always said that eight bites is all you need, to get the sense of what you are eating … No pushing food in circles or pretending. Iron will, slender waistline (Machado).” In the previous paragraphs before this, it talks about how the main protagonist’s sisters went through a procedure to be like their mother. We can see the mother looks “normal” to the main character. In a line before this paragraph, her sisters claim that they feel good in general “I feel so good,” they said. Whenever I talk to them, that was what always came out of their mouths, or really, it was a mouth, a single mouth that once ate and now just says “I feel really good (Machado).” So naturally, a younger sibling, if one says they feel good about themselves the young one would want to follow in their footsteps and try to be like them in a way. The main character wants to feel that way about herself too, so she tries to follow by eating eight bites.  This idea is presented in Freud’s work with the theory of Identification where a child wants to be like one of their parents (Freud). The narrator wants to be like her mom since she saw her as normal, and that it was normal to eat only eight bites and be slim while she was heavier.  

Growing up many people become self-conscious about their bodies when they see themselves as a bit different than the rest. “I ate eight bites and then stopped. I set the fork down next to the plate, ….  I sat down again and had eight more bites. Not much more, still barely a dent, but now twice as much as necessary. But the salad leaves were dripping vinegar and oil and the noodles had lemon and cracked pepper and everything was just so beautiful, and I was still hungry, and so I had eight more. After I finished what was in the pot on the stove and I was so angry I began to cry (Machado).” This tells us that the protagonist isn’t happy with her self-control and eating habits. She tries to follow the family tradition and literally eats her meals in eight bites, but she can’t. She ends up being meticulous with her food, the salad, and how the leaves are dripping vinegar and oil onto the noodles. No one would say this unless they were in a deep state of hunger which the character is in. To add on, she continued to eat till there was nothing left. Then she got angry and began to cry. This reveals her guilt about eating what was left in the pot. She tried to follow through with only eight bites but couldn’t and now feels bad that she can’t be like the rest of her family and eat eight bites which can make a person very insecure.  

   
We all have some type of pleasure we desire, one can be a sexual pleasure, another can be through art, and some are bodies. The main protagonist goes through a surgery called Gastric Bypass Surgery where a person’s stomach is divided and gets smaller, she gets the surgery and after some time “But one day I button a pair of pants and they fall to my feet. I marvel at what is beneath. A pre-Cal body. A pre-me body. It is emerging, like the lie of snow withdrawing from the truth of the landscape. My sisters finally go home. They kiss me and tell me that I look beautiful (Machado).” We can see that she finally acquired her dream body after a long time, the emphasis of the pants falling to her feet while being buttoned tells us that she lost a lot of weight. With any progress towards a goal, of course, you’re going to feel good and especially when complimented by another person you know. She’s happy but she also got rid of something else along the way, her daughter. She called her daughter to let her know about the surgery but the daughter, Cal, wasn’t a fan of it “She was talking, but it grew into a yell. I shooed the words away like bees. “– occur to you that you’re never going to be able to eat like a normal human–” “What is wrong with you?” I finally asked her. “Mom, I just don’t know why you can’t be happy with yourself. You’ve never been–(Machado).” Cal doesn’t agree with the idea, but the mom hangs up mid-sentence. This is what also causes both to drift apart in life. Cal is the reason why the narrator doesn’t like her body since Cal messed up the narrator during the pregnancy, which doesn’t live up to the ideology the mother was brought up with as a child. Being all slender and thin instead of being thick. 

The theory of Phallic, more specifically Identification. In simple terms identification is where a child wishes to be like one of their parents, the narrator is trying to be like her mother and live up to her tradition of eating eight bites. Not only was she eating eight bites, but she was also slim, and the narrator wanted to be like her but couldn’t be due to her eating problem. She tried and failed which led her to get Gastric Bypass surgery to reduce her stomach which eventually worked, and she finally achieved her dream. However, this causes there to be a drift between the narrator and her actual daughter Cal. Cal doesn’t agree since he is cutting her stomach for no reason when the narrator is living up to the family tradition and wanting to be happy. This is an important thing to talk about since family traditions can be truly toxic and can destroy relationships with one another, not only mutually but also on the inside. Yes, you may be happy now but after a while, is it worth it? Destroying connections, being lonely all the time. No type of pain hurts more than being all by yourself, just like they say happiness is only temporary. All that “hard work” to be recognized, only to die with no one by your side. This is how family traditions can destroy family dynamics.  

Works Cited    

Machado, Carmen Maria. “Eight Bites.” Gulf Coast Magazine, http://texas.gulfcoastmag.org/journal/29.2-summer/fall-2017/eight-bites/. 

Freud, Sigmund. [1909] Five Lectures on Psych-AANALYSIS – Internet Archive. https://archive.org/download/SigmundFreud/Sigmund%20Freud%20%5B1909%5D%20Five%20Lectures%20on%20Psych-Aanalysis%20%28James%20Strachey%20translation%2C%201955%29.pdf. 

“Apa PsycNet.” American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1996-02480-001. 

Burney, John, and Harvey J. Irwin. Shame and Guilt in Women with Eating-Disorder Symptomatology. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4679(200001)56:1%3C51::AID-JCLP5%3E3.0.CO;2-W.