She's Come Undone

Content Warning: This section contains descriptions of child sexual abuse, domestic violence, suicidal ideation, and self-harm. This section also quotes misogynist and sizeist slurs, which are reproduced only in quotations. 

“The two men and my mother smile at my fright, delight in it. Or else, they’re sympathetic and consoling. My memory of that day is, like television itself, sharp and clear but unreliable.”

Dolores admits almost immediately that her memories are not always reliable and the reader must take them with the knowledge of possible bias, misremembrances, or twisting of particular moments. Dolores recalls the men who brought the family TV as being the president and vice president, but cannot recall whether they laughed at her when she became frightened by the pictures on the television screen.

“The harder I pedaled—the more I risked—the better I felt.”

Foreshadowing her later self-harm and suicidal ideation, Dolores admits that as a child she often thrived on risk and danger, seeking to put herself in harm’s way. This sort of enjoyment of harm and risk is something that she grapples with until mid-adulthood.

“Power had made me hungry and I was already eating out of the bag of potato chips.”

Food and gluttony are some of Dolores’s biggest weaknesses, and during her childhood and youth, she develops a desire to hold power over others, mirroring the way it is always held over her. She metaphorically compares this desire for power, which is a constantly flowing theme throughout the novel, to the food she gorges on.