28 pages • 56 minutes read
Carmen Maria MachadoHer Body and Other Parties
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Story 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 2 Summary: “Inventory”
The protagonist takes stock of her sexual encounters before and after the outbreak of a deadly virus that threatens to wipe out the human race. Through a series of homosexual and heterosexual encounters, she chronicles the development of the disease. Within this running inventory of lovers, the protagonist makes other lists of more mundane things, such as every house she ever lived in. The reader learns that the disease is spread through human contact. As one of the protagonist’s lovers bemoans before rolling over and falling asleep, “If people would just stay apart” (38). Through these encounters, the reader witnesses the people around the protagonist reach a fever pitch of desperation. As the story continues, the protagonist becomes increasingly isolated, first moving to remote parts of the country and finally finding herself completely alone on an island.
Story 2 Analysis: “Inventory”
“Inventory” moves deeply into the collection’s isolation motif, using the protagonist’s timeline of lovers as a foil. The motif is at its most poignant when a pragmatic lover overlooks her own hypocrisy by commenting with irritation as she lays in bed, “If only people would just stay apart” (38). The characters’ inherent need for each other, even in the face of death, throws into relief man’s biggest dichotomy: Humans are at once linked and estranged by the shared yet highly individualized experience of being alive. In the end, the reader gets the sense that the true sickness that will eventually consume the protagonist is loneliness.
Though much less explicit than the collection’s other stories, “Inventory” alludes to the book’s theme of male dominance and entitlement through the character of a Marine who seeks shelter from the protagonist, only to attempt to attack her. Though the protagonist shows him kindness, he soon exposes his ingratitude and entitlement by trying to dominate her. Unlike many of Machado’s other protagonists, this survivor of the virus comes out on top of this display of male power and ends up successfully banishing the Marine from her home.
“Inventory” leans heavily into a prevalent theme throughout the book, the threat of dystopia, using the structure of lists to create a sense of nomadic journey or near escape from the deadly virus. The subtle shift into dystopia that the list structure alludes to accentuates the dailiness of this dystopic futurity, mimicking environmental phenomena such as climate change or the 2020 coronavirus.
