Hey, everyone! For some reason, my website is still not letting anyone download the commentary on the second half of the book. So I am just going to provide it here in this blog.

Check it out when you have some time if this is content that interests you!

Either way, I hope to see you in about an hour at our last Cost of Freedom zoom call for Tender is the Flesh.

I sent that zoom info out in a blog last week, but I will provide it again here for anyone who missed it! We are meeting promptly at 7pm CST. You can find the event HERE. And you can expect it to last about 30-45 minutes!

Hope to see you there! And please be watching for a blog tomorrow, as I will be recapping some of our discussions and experiences with this book and asking for some feedback on what kind of content and gatherings you want to see for our next community read, which starts in just a few weeks!

Thanks!

Chapter 1

Book one ended with his walls shattering completely. Everything he thought about himself turned out to be a lie. He was not the man he thought he was and he was being confronted with the reality that neither he, nor the world, will ever go back to being what he thought they were. Humanity seems to be devolving into madness. Meanwhile, he is trying to carve some kind of life out for himself. And for her.

We are watching as he is marrying two realities:

The first being that he is capable of things he never would have dreamed of.

The second being that this woman he has been forcing himself to see as something almost human can, and will, be every bit the human she could have been in a different life.

But it is important that we do not confuse who this story is about. We are not watching him rescue Jasmine. This story is not about her finding her humanity or his growth as a person. It is about his understanding of himself as he does whatever he feels he has to in order to have the life he wants. Keep that in mind, as it informs the entire story. His treatment of Jasmine is about him, not her.

What this chapter does is set the stage for where Tejo is headed next. In part one, we followed along as he confronted his own understanding of himself. Now that his walls have shattered and he has been forced to accept that he is not the good man he thought he was, we get to watch as he responds to that reality.

Chapter 2

This chapter is so fascinating to me. So much of his story, up until this point, has been about his loss. The loss of his family and his sense of self. And yet now that he has begun to address who he actually is, his wife is at his door, looking to reconsider their life. But a part of his conflict is that he is trying to figure out how to build who he wants to be, while knowing that nothing can ever truly go back to what it was.

First, because his son is dead.

Second, because Jasmine is pregnant.

Third, because regardless of whatever he has with her, he can never hide what she is. So any future they try to build is forfeit from the beginning.

And to complicate matters, he also has to deal with the fact that even as he wrestle with his own crumbled image of himself, he must continue playing his part in protecting the rest of humanity’s equally fragile walls.

Chapter 3

From Tejo’s perspective, his life is coming together. He is building a new life for himself and taking every precaution he can to prevent the tragedies he experienced before from happening again. To him, he is growing and building. But from the outside, we can see that he is in denial. He is not building. He is trying to relive the life he lost, but this time, he wants to live it while maintaining control.

Tejo’s walls may be finally down, but he is doing everything he can to build them right back up.

Chapter 4

More and more, it becomes clear that the image the world has collectively accepted in order to hold onto their humanity is fragile and in danger. From religious sects that choose to sacrifice themselves for the good of the world, to celebrities who openly allow themselves to be hunted by sadistic men who kill for sport, it is clear that the only people who believe they are not actually killing and eating human beings are the people who need to believe that.

Just as we explored how the only thing separating Tejo and the men he detested was his choice to see the humanity of their victims, the only thing separating the average person and the most evil among them is their choice to not see.

Chapter 5

This was the single hardest chapter in the book for me to read. And it being my fourth read through did nothing to soften it. Over and over we are reminded that no one is confused about the evils they are complicit in.

But there is a trap here. One I think about each time I read. Men like Urlet and Guerrero serve a similar role for us, as readers, that Kreig and El Gringo served for Tejo. By looking at their open viciousness and the way they embrace their most evil instincts, we are able to look at the average person—who most closely represents ourselves—and to see them as ignorant people who only comply in order to keep their life as uninterupted as possible.

These characters allow us to watch as less openly violent characters commit evil and to see them as morally grey, comparatively.

Resist that instinct.

Chapter 6

As we have discussed throughout the book, the propaganda being levied at people never successfully convinces the masses of what is obviously not true. Instead, it gives them an excuse to believe what they want to. It serves as permission, allowing people to comply with the position of those in power without feeling morally obligated to resist.

If world governments were to come out and say, “Let’s eat poor people so that we can reduce human population”, people would resist. Not everyone. But perhaps enough people to actually create a successful resistance. Even some people who truly don’t care. The moral weight of killing and eating poor people would be too heavy. But if there is an excuse for ignoring the problem, they can cling to it and pretend that their complicity is reasonable.

Do we know that the virus is fake?

No. But what we do know is this: it doesn’t matter.

Some people believe it is real. Some people believe it is fake. Some people don’t know what they believe.

They all comply.

Chapters 7 & 8

The inspector showing up in the way he does reminds Tejo of a multiple things:

It reminds Tejo that no matter what justification he has created for himself, he does understand the moral implications of his behavior. Because he is one of the people who created the standards he is disregarding.

It reminds hims him of the cost of getting caught. He won’t just have to deal with people seeing him as a bad person. It will mean his immediate execution.

It reminds him that his power is limited and at any moment, he could lose the privilege that allows him to safely navigate his complicity.

An important reminder for him and for us. Often, we cling to flimsy justifications for our complicity, while having a much clearer moral compass when it comes to others. As long as we are able to maintain those justifications and have ample privilege to navigate our choices without consequence, we let our complicity remain unchecked. But as Tejo realizes in this chapter, that doesn’t change the actual weight of what we do.

Chapters 9-12

These chapters are a whirlwind, as death often is. We see Tejo experience a single moment of what he feels is happiness reminiscent of the life he has lost, only for the entire weight of that loss to come crashing back down on him.

His father is dead.

His family is gone.

His sister is a mess.

All that he has is the memory of a life he cannot replace, no matter how hard he tries. Because despite all of the comfort he gets from Jasmine’s presence, she will always be his dirty little secret. Evidence that he is, and has always been, just like every corrupt and evil person he has ever tried to distance himself from.

Chapter 13

Its such a brief moment, but for me, this was an incredibly important moment for Tejo. We have spent the last twelve chapters, watching him try to rebuild the walls that kept his humanity alive. And in just a few hours, they have been broken back down to dust. Irreparable. And this is the moment he realizes it.

No matter what he does, he cannot have the image of himself he spent years fighting to hold onto. Its over. He knows the truth now.

What he can still fight for is control.

Chapters 14 & 15

Control. Like we talked about in the last chapter, control is all he has left. Good or bad, his only tether to holding onto himself is staying in command of his own choices. A reality that haunts him. Because the uncomfortable truth is, he has never had that either. Everything he is and has is quickly slipping from his fingers and he is afraid. Afraid of becoming the men he has spent years distancing himself from. Afraid of becoming his father.

No matter what it takes, or what it costs him, he is determined to protect himself. He will not give any ground. Every moment of concession, every fake smile or forced apology is another inch of give that he cannot afford.

He doesn’t care that the doctor is evil. He doesn’t care if the virus is fake. He doesn’t care if his clients are killing people, maiming people, or experimenting on them, and he doesn't care if their work goes on to make the world better in some way—as scientists often justify their evil complicity. Tejo doesn’t care about any of that.

For Tejo, this is no longer about morality. It is about control.

But more interestingly, we the reader can begin to see here that control has always been what it was about. The rest was just how Tejo convinced himself he had it.

Chapter 11: Chapter 16

For years, Tejo has used his responsibilities to his family as an excuse to continue being complicit in an evil industry. So it is ironic that now that he has been forced to wrestle with his lost morality and has abandoned all sense of right and wrong in order to seize control of the life he lost, his wife is ready to reconcile.

We don’t know his motivations at this point for not embracing her. But we do know that, for Tejo, this is another moment of loss. Cecelia is a reminder of everything he was supposed to have, while Jasmine is a reminder that he can never have it.

Chapter 12: Chapter 17

There is a few moments here that really spoke to me. First being when Tejo realizes his sister has taken one of his memories with his father and replaced his image with herself, followed by his own reflection about how he, alone, knew his father. In particular, he thinks about the fact that when his mother died, a piece of his father died with her.

I can’t help but wonder if this is a moment of self-reflection for him. Not just in relation to his father, but in the way that he mirrors himself. While he hasn’t experienced mental illness like his father did—at least not in a way he recognizes—the very center of the life he built for himself left with his wife. Everything he believed about himself has proven to be a lie.

He is not who he thought he was.

He never was who he thought he was.

And like his father, the man he was with Cecelia no longer exists. And no one will miss him.

Chapter 18

This is an important moment in our story. Because once again, Tejo is the center of our story. It is easy to see the entire world as an extension of his world, but that is not the case. And while he has been holding onto his humanity and justifying his participation in a system that is making the world objectively worse, everyone else in the world has also been wrestling with this new reality.

The scavengers have always been hard to reconcile. We don’t see the world through their eyes. We don’t know what they’ve been told, what they’ve had taken from them, what they believe, know or fear. We know nothing about them other than their devastating desperation.

And now we know another thing… they are no longer willing to play by the unofficial rules of Tejo’s world. They aren’t satisfied with the part they’ve been conditioned to play. They don’t care that they occasionally get tossed a bone. Because Tejo isnt the only one who can seize control.

Which brings me to the actual role I think the scavengers really play in this story. They show us what Tejo has actually been afraid to become this entire time: Powerless.

He is never going to be El Gringo. Too proud.

He is never going to be his sister. Too ignorant.

He is never going to be his father. Too weak.

But the scavengers? They represent a possibility that doesn’t exist anywhere else. They represent what it looks like to be desperate for control in a world where you have none.

I think for a lot of people, complicity is less about them being excited to do evil things and much more about them being afraid of joining people at the bottom. And as Tejo demonstrates in this moment, if we aren’t active in our resistance, that fear will drive us into the arms of our oppressors in our effort to avoid becoming our victims.

Chapter 19

This book did a masterful job of disguising its intentions. It is easy to look through his eyes and believe the lies he tells himself. But the truth was always right in front of him, and us.

Tejo was complicit because, to him, he mattered more than everyone else.

And that is what this conversation ultimately comes down to. Is our morality driven by our desire to rule our own lives, or by our commitment to value the humanity of the people around us?

Marcos spent this entire story wrestling with that question and ultimately decided on himself. But what I think is most interesting in discourse around this book is how shocked people often are at its ending.

This is always where Tejo's story was ending. There is never a moment where he heading toward growth. From start to finish, he is complicit and he is only concerned with holding onto his image of himself and the life he wants to be living.

And while we judge him—as we should—the question remains a fair one. With the right motivators, and convenient lies we can cling to, most people are capable of justifying their own complicity. Would we all become cannibals? No, of course not. But our world is riddled with horrific systems that destroy and end the lives of people society has placed at the bottom. And for most of us, morality comes down to choosing whether we will prioritize our fight to stay above them, or our fight to stand with them against the systems that ultimately define us all.