The Deer and the Dragon

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child abuse and cursing.

“[I]t had been a running pleasure of mine to play catch and release. The bigger the fish, the more satisfying it was to throw them back into the water.”

Marlow uses a metaphor to compare her real-world dates to fish caught on a line. Just like a person who goes fishing and throws the fish back into the water after catching them, the fun for Marlow is in the catching, not the keeping, of the men she meets. This indicates how she treats dating—more like a game than an attempt to find love—because her heart already belongs to Caliban, even though she does not want to admit it.

“Particularly as my lifestyle grew more controversial and obscure, it hadn’t taken long to prune my friend group further and further until I’d whittled it down to three—all of whom I saw almost exclusively through the accessible magic of the internet.”

Marlow compares her small circle of friends to a plant or shrub that has been pruned and whittled down to almost nothing. Aside from her three current friends, she has no one else on whom to rely, suggesting a pattern of self-isolation that could be caused, in part, by The Impact of Religious and Childhood Trauma. The fewer people Marlow lets in, the fewer people who can hurt or manipulate her.

“He consumed me like cold fire, and he knew it.”

Marlow uses a simile, which is also an oxymoron, to describe Caliban’s effect on her. The comparison characterizes him as being like fire, something that consumes and devours violently and painfully by burning a path of destruction.