The Act of Preservation in Monstrilio: A Mother's Lung in a Jam Jar
What the Act of Preservation Is
The act of preservation in Monstrilio's opening chapter is a literal, physical event. After her son Santiago dies in his child-sized bed in the family's secluded Upstate New York house, Magos makes an incision in his abdomen, locates the single lung that defined him, slices off its downmost tip with a paring knife, and stores the piece in a clear jam jar that Santiago used to keep pencils in.
The act is framed as a search for one last secret — the part of a person's body that is inextricably themselves. Magos systematically rules out hair (too public and not a secret), fingers and toes (which she knows intimately — his thin fingers like her husband's, his pudgy toes like hers), his tongue, and his heart (a quiet, solitary heart engaged to her and her husband). The lung wins because Santiago has only one — a tiny lung that carried her son way past his expected life span. She calls it the core of his Santiagoness, a thing she loves and hates in equal measure: she wants to thank it and spit on it for not carrying him further.
The act is not impulsive. Magos plans it with care. She uses her husband's sharp kitchen knives — a sharp knife is essential for a good cook, Joseph claims — and performs the first incision with the utmost care, lest Santiago wake up in a sudden rebirth. She refuses to break his ribs, sneaking her hand under them to find the lung. She initially wants to rip the lung out entirely but pulls gently, still thinking she can hurt her son, and ultimately decides Santiago should keep his lung — she'll take only a nugget, the downmost tip. The jam jar is not random: it's Santiago's own pencil jar, a container already woven into his daily life. There's no lid, but she knows where to find one.
Where the Motif Recurs
Within the opening chapter, the physical act happens once, but the motif of preservation recurs through a cluster of related images and gestures. The jam jar itself is the most concrete recurrence — it appears first as Santiago's pencil jar and then as the vessel for the lung tip, transforming an ordinary object into a reliquary. The blood-licking is another iteration: after the incision, Magos smears and licks her hands, savoring a taste of iron and warmth, and reflects that she now understands the vampire's craving to drink deep. The Lorca play memory — a mother who kneels and delivers a monologue about her son's blood, ending with the claim that the blood is hers — frames the act as part of a tradition of maternal claims on the dead.
The motif also recurs in Magos's earlier fantasy of Santiago dying in a Mexico City mall, where she would become a Pietà, marble and gorgeous — a fantasy of preserving her grief in a public, theatrical form. And it recurs in the small gestures of care: she folds Joseph's body and walks him to bed, she licks Santiago's ear like an animal would, she reassembles her son's body and wipes the blood with a saliva-soaked piece of sheet. Each gesture is an attempt to hold onto something that is slipping away.
How Its Meaning Shifts
The meaning of the act shifts across the chapter. Initially, it's framed as curiosity and love — Magos wants to see the lung and hold it, to understand the organ that carried her son past his expected life span. The act is also a form of defiance: she is not done with her son, not yet ready to hand him away to the cremation and funeral that await. The preservation is an attempt to keep the core of his Santiagoness from disappearing.
But the act also carries a darker meaning. Magos's reflection that their son is only hers now — after she walks Joseph to bed — suggests the act is also about ownership of the dead. She wants to possess the lung, to have a piece of Santiago that no one else can claim. The Lorca memory reinforces this: the mother's claim that the blood is hers. The blood-licking is a visceral claim of possession, and Magos admits she understands the vampire's impulse — the craving to drink deep and thirsty in her bowels.
When Joseph returns and says you've destroyed him, the meaning shifts again. Magos rejects the word: she has destroyed nothing; nothing was left to destroy. But she concedes she has made a mess. The act, which began as an act of love and preservation, becomes something that separates her from her husband — a private, almost monstrous act that he cannot understand. The jam jar, which held pencils, now holds a piece of their son's body.
Character and Theme Connections
Magos: The act defines her grief. Unlike Joseph, who grieves physically and audibly — grunting, squeezing, smelling — Magos grieves through action and possession. She is the one who folds Joseph and walks him to bed, who takes charge of the body, who decides what to keep. The act reveals her as someone who cannot accept passive grief; she must do something, even if that something is horrifying. Her grief is a bodily instinct — expressed through licking, tasting, cutting — rather than an intellectual or emotional process.
Joseph: His grief is physical and relational — he nuzzles, squeezes, smells their son. He is romantic in Magos's view, someone who might die of grief. His reaction to the act — freezing, then saying you've destroyed him — marks the first fracture between the couple. He sees the act as destruction; she sees it as preservation. This divergence connects to the theme of ownership of the dead: both parents claim Santiago's body, but in incompatible ways.
Santiago: Though dead, Santiago is present through the objects that defined him: his dinosaur pajamas with thinning patches, his pencil jar, his single lung. The act of preservation is an attempt to keep his essence alive, but it also reveals how little of him is left — the lung is lighter and more inconsequential than she thought. The act connects to the theme of imagined versus real death: Magos's fantasy of a theatrical death in a mall contrasts with the dull reality of death in a quiet house, and the act of preservation is her attempt to impose meaning on a death that felt meaningless.
Themes: The act connects directly to the solitude of parental grief — it happens alone, after she walks Joseph to bed, and their son is only hers now. It also connects to preservation as defiance: the act defies the expected sequence of events — cremation, funeral, black clothes — and refuses to let Santiago be handed away.
Study Questions with Answers
1. Why does Magos choose the lung rather than hair, fingers, or heart?
Magos rules out hair because it's too public and not a secret — it's the kind of thing anyone could keep in a locket. Fingers and toes she knows too well; they're extensions of her and Joseph (his fingers like her husband's, his toes like hers). The heart is a quiet, solitary heart engaged to her and her husband — shared. The lung is unique: Santiago has only one, and it carried her son way past his expected life span. It's the part of him that is most distinctly his — the core of his Santiagoness — and therefore the part most worth preserving.
2. What does the jam jar symbolize?
The jam jar is Santiago's pencil jar — a mundane object from his daily life. By placing the lung tip in it, Magos transforms an ordinary container into a reliquary. The jar symbolizes the act of preservation itself: it's a vessel that keeps something from disappearing. But it also symbolizes the inadequacy of preservation — a jam jar is a humble, almost absurd container for a piece of a child's body. The missing lid (she knows where to find one) suggests the preservation is incomplete, a work in progress.
3. How does Joseph's reaction change the meaning of the act?
Joseph's words — you've destroyed him — reframe the act from preservation to destruction. Magos rejects this framing (nothing was left to destroy) but concedes she has made a mess. The exchange reveals the couple's divergent grief: Joseph sees the body as sacred and whole; Magos sees it as already lost. The act, which Magos experienced as love, becomes a source of division between them, connecting to the theme of the solitude of parental grief.
4. What does the Lorca play memory reveal about Magos's understanding of grief?
The memory of the mother who claims the blood is hers frames Magos's act as a claim of ownership. The mother in the play licks her hands to claim her son's blood; Magos licks Santiago's blood for the same reason. The memory also connects Magos to a tradition of maternal grief — she is not alone in her impulse, even if her act is more extreme. The play's theatricality contrasts with the dull reality of Santiago's death, suggesting that Magos's grief needs a form, a ritual, even a grotesque one.