What is an example of motif in the novel, With Teeth?

Over the course of the novel, repeated images of the body create a complex commentary on appearance and identity, detachment and entrapment. Because the entirety of the third person narration is filtered through Sammie’s lens, references to Sammie’s body originate from Sammie’s psyche. One of the first of such references appears in Chapter 2 while Sammie and Monika are out for dinner. The narrator says that Sammie wishes she had ordered Monika’s pasta, “but she was putting on weight around her hips and thighs and was trying to cut back on carbs” (27). Later, while Sammie watches Monika flirt with a woman in the elevator, the narrator says “Monika’s natural charm made her a magnet to most women, while Sammie’s body had changed so much after having Samson that she’d developed a slew of insecurities” (32). A few paragraphs later, the narrator goes on, saying “that with Samson’s arrival [Sammie] had just really stopped trying. She hadn’t cared what she looked like, because her body had stopped feeling like her own. Why even take care of a thing that no one else wanted to look at?” (33). Then Sammie recalls her reflection in the mirror before leaving home that night, having “seen someone who looked tired. Her face didn’t look like hers anymore, or what she remembered as hers. Now when she looked in the mirror, all she saw was a body that didn’t belong to her” (34). While these references are collected within one series of scenes, such corporeal descriptions saturate the narrative. In this way, the author reveals Sammie’s constant awareness of her physical form yet perpetual dissociation from it. Her body is a vessel she no longer owns. Because she does not feel ownership of it, she feels incapable of inhabiting it.