Sweetbitter

Content Warning: This guide contains discussion of drug abuse, sex, violence, and mental-health stigmatizations.

“A palate is a spot on your tongue where you remember. Where you assign words to the textures of taste. Eating becomes a discipline, language-obsessed. You will never simply eat food again.”

In this quote, Danler connects the experience of food and eating to a language. This introduces her concept of using literary imagery to depict eating and the self-discovery that occurs both with acquisition of new language and with learning about eating. This quote also uses the palate as a symbol for memory, which is important to Tess’s character development.

“I was never good at the future. I grew up with girls whose chief occupation was the future—designing it, instigating it. They could talk about it with so much confidence that it sounded like the past. During those talks, I had contributed nothing.”

This quote characterizes Tess as uncertain about her future. She hasn’t internalized and identified with social pressures to determine her future; unlike the other girls she knows who construct their futures. Tess is therefore malleable, open to new experiences, but also unsure of herself.

“Whatever it was, just being a backwaiter, a server, a barista—at this restaurant I wasn’t just anything. And I wouldn’t call it being a fifty-one percenter because that sounded like a robot. But I felt marked. I felt noticed, not just by my coworkers who scorned me, but by the city. And every time a complaint, a moan, or an eye roll rose to the surface, I smiled instead.”

Tess starts identifying herself through her role with others at the restaurant. She takes pride and joy in her work because it’s exciting, fast-paced, and makes her feel like she is part of an exclusive club. Without a fully formed identity of her own, Tess hangs on to feelings of being noticed or marked. Being a part of something larger than herself, even when it’s isolating and stressful, makes her happy.