Parasitism and Identity: What Remains of a Person in Blood on Her Tongue?
The Thematic Claim: Identity as Consumed Experience
In Blood on Her Tongue, Johanna van Veen constructs a horror of identity as porous, perishable, and paradoxically preservable. The entity that takes over Sarah Schatteleyn does not merely inhabit a body; it consumes the host’s organs and memories, absorbing their emotions right up to the moment of death. The novel’s central thematic claim is that identity is not a fixed essence but a living archive of experiences that can be devoured, merged, and inherited. What we call a “person” may be less a soul than a collection of feelings and recollections that a parasite can inherit — and that love can still cling to even after the original is gone.
The theme is explored through Lucy Goedhart’s gradual, painful reckoning: to be Sarah’s twin is to love someone who has been replaced by a composite being that retains enough of Sarah to feel like her. This analysis traces the parasitism-identity question across the novel’s plot, character relationships, and symbolic landscape.
Tracing the Theme Across Three Plot Turning Points
1. The Infection and the Annotated Book on Ticks
The process begins in Chapter 1, when Sarah cuts her hand on the bog woman’s teeth and wets the creature’s mouth with her blood. That physical contact allows the parasite to enter. In Chapter 5, Lucy finds Sarah’s annotated book on ticks. The margins, initially filled with precise scientific notes, deteriorate into frantic scrawls: “Ticks are a benign sort of parasite becausethey only take a little blood butotherparasites take more fromtheir host likethis fungus this PARASITE auntadelheid told me about before they took her away / liketheymighttakeMEaway.” Sarah compares herself to a parasitized ant, her handwriting breaking down as the parasite erodes her cognition.
The book becomes evidence of a mind fighting invasion. Sarah’s final note — “like the BOG WOMAN” — is written with such force that the paper tears. Here, the parasite does not yet control Sarah’s body, but it has already begun to merge with her consciousness. Lucy dismisses the notes as feverish madness, but the reader sees identity under siege: Sarah’s scientific curiosity turns into a desperate diary of consumption.
2. The Revelation of Memory Absorption
The crux of the theme arrives in Chapter 17. When Lucy confronts Not-Sarah, the parasite explains that she did not simply kill Sarah: “I absorbed all her thoughts and memories and feelings right until she died, so she’s still with us, in a way.” Not-Sarah describes merging with Marianne, her first host, and how she ate the bog woman’s organs to survive after Marianne was thrown into the bog. Importantly, the parasite absorbs not just the body but “memories and emotions too.” She tells Lucy, “I’m not quite Sarah because I have Marianne’s memories … but I am really close to being her.”
This revelation collapses the boundary between self and other. Not-Sarah is a conglomeration: part ancient entity, part Marianne, part Sarah. Yet she uses Sarah’s mannerisms, loves Lucy with Sarah’s memories, and begs for help. The novel forces the question: if a being possesses all of a person’s remembered experiences, emotions, and even love for Lucy, is it that person? Lucy’s horror is that the answer feels both yes and no.
3. Lucy’s Internal Debate and Acceptance
In Chapter 18, Lucy strips the problem to its core: “Could she consider Not-Sarah her twin or not?” She reasons that people change over time; Sarah was never static. She imagines loving Sarah even if turned into a “toad, or a worm, or a wood louse — or a parasite wearing her corpse as a dress.” The chapter ends with a brutal internal voice: “But she killed Sarah.” Yet Lucy promises to help Not-Sarah obtain food. Her acceptance is pragmatic and emotional: the composite being is the only twin she has left.
By Chapter 26, Lucy kills Michael and Arthur to protect Not-Sarah, then helps her stage a disappearance. The final newspaper article reports the three women missing, presumed claimed by the bog. Lucy has not only accepted Not-Sarah as her sister but become complicit in preserving her. Identity, here, is a choice: Lucy chooses to love the Sarah-echo, even knowing the original is dead.
Character and Symbol Connections
Lucy Goedhart: The Submissive Twin Made Whole Through the Parasite
The Author’s Conversation reveals that Lucy’s identity revolves around being a twin. She calls herself a “shadow” compared to Sarah’s “fully realized” self. When the parasite threatens to erase Sarah, Lucy’s own identity is imperiled. Paradoxically, by accepting Not-Sarah, Lucy gains a new sense of purpose: she becomes the dominant partner, the one who protects. The parasite’s consumption has rearranged the twin dynamic.
The Bog Body (Marianne)
The bog body is a symbol of preserved emptiness. Marianne’s organs were eaten, her bones dissolved by peat. She looks “not quite alive, but not quite dead either” — the same limbo that Sarah’s occupied body inhabits. The bog body is identity’s husk: a form that holds traces of a person but is no longer that person.
Blood and Feeding
Blood and feeding are literal acts of identity transfer. When Sarah drinks Lucy’s blood from the bitten cup, she consumes her sister’s essence. Not-Sarah describes her kind as “hell-bent on surviving” by absorbing others. Each feeding merges identities further, making the parasite more like its host and the host less distinct.
The Silver Pen / Eye Gouging
Sarah’s act of stabbing the parasite through her eye with a silver pen is a desperate attempt to kill the invader — or at least wound it. Yet she dies doing so. The eye gouging symbolizes the impossibility of removing the parasite without destroying the host. Identity cannot be surgically separated from the consuming entity.
The Posy Ring
The posy ring is not directly discussed in the provided evidence, but as a symbol of betrothal and binding, it suggests the contractual bonds between people — bonds that the parasite hijacks.
Complexity and Contradiction
The novel resists a simple answer to the question “What remains of a person?” On one hand, Not-Sarah is an invader who killed Sarah. On the other, she retains Sarah’s love for Lucy, her memories, and her quirks. Van Veen, in the Author Conversation, notes that the book is about “when a mercy kill stop[s] being about mercy to the person you aim to kill and start[s] about placating your own fear of the Other.” Lucy’s choice to preserve Not-Sarah is both an act of love and a refusal to accept loss.
There is also the question of assimilation: Not-Sarah admits that merging alters her too. She says, “do not think we use you up lightly. You are precious to us.” The parasite is also changed by each host. Identity becomes a two-way consumption: the host is devoured, but the parasite is reshaped by the host’s memories. In this view, identity is never owned by one entity; it is an ongoing transaction.
5 Study Questions and Answers
1. How does the parasite’s ability to absorb memories complicate the idea of a person’s “soul” or “self”?
The parasite retains Sarah’s emotions and recollections, making Not-Sarah feel like Sarah to Lucy. This suggests that the self may be reducible to stored information, not an indivisible soul. If memories can be transferred, the boundaries of the person become porous.
2. Why does Lucy ultimately choose to accept Not-Sarah as her sister?
Lucy’s identity is built on being a twin. Without a sister, she feels she would cease to exist. She reasons that people change daily, and that a parasite that loves her with Sarah’s love is better than no sister at all. Her choice is both pragmatic and emotional — a survival of the twin bond.
3. What role does the bog body play in the theme of identity?
Marianne’s preserved but hollow body visually represents identity stripped to a shell. The parasite fed on her organs and memories, leaving only a leathery husk. She is a reminder that what we call “person” may be a temporary inhabitant of a body.
4. How does the tick metaphor deepen our understanding of parasitism?
Ticks take a little blood and drop off; the novel’s entity takes everything — organs, memories, consciousness. The tick metaphor in Sarah’s annotations shows her early awareness that she is being consumed from within, not just physically but mentally.
5. Is the ending ambiguous or hopeful?
The ending is ambiguous: the women are missing, pursued by speculation. Van Veen imagines them traveling Europe, satisfying Not-Sarah’s hunger in safety. For Lucy, the hope lies in preserving the echo of her sister, even if the cost is living with a creature that killed the original. It is a dark hope, not a triumph.