“Once, early on, I told her I was afraid of dying, not of death in general, but of the actual moment when I would no longer be able to put anything off till later, and that this fear always comes over me when it’s dark, never in the daytime, and goes on for several awful moments, like an epileptic fit.”

Tokarczuk uses literary devices such as similes to amplify the emotions and experiences of the novel’s characters. In this instance, she compares the narrator’s fear of the moment of dying, and the loss of possibility in this moment, to that of having an epileptic episode. This comparison creates an association between the narrator’s fear that attacks her, and the intense waves of the fit. It characterizes the fear as happening in short bursts, but of intense anguish. This passage also introduces The Coexistence of the Living Alongside the Dead, as the narrator’s preoccupation with the boundaries between life and death persist throughout the narrative.

“So the bird inside Marek Marek had restless wings, fettered legs and terrified eyes. He assumed it was imprisoned inside him. Someone had incarcerated it there, though he hadn’t the faintest idea how that was possible. Sometimes, if he let his thoughts wander, he encountered its terrible gaze deep inside himself and heard a mournful, bestial lament.”

Marek Marek has depression and an alcohol dependency. He characterizes his pain as a bird, reflecting The Use of Folklore to Challenge Reality. Marek Marek characterizes himself as a victim of the bird, but also the bird as a victim itself. Their relationship is the inversion of symbiosis, with both suffering. The bird suffers from its confinement within Marek Marek, and Marek Marek suffers from the bird’s struggles to free itself, turning substance dependency and mental illness into both a literal and figurative form.