I feel like I know the answer to this question but I want to expand my thoughts and be clear on it. The presence is obviously metaphorical. The story portrays it as a physical blob of flesh with no eyes or limbs or senses, just a blob. It is clearly a reference to the part of herself that the narrator cut off during her surgery. I was wondering what the point of the flesh was in the story and it slowly got clearer towards the end. The presence represents more than just a physical thing, it is a metaphor to the part of the narrator that she can’t quite erase, no matter how hard she tries. And she does try very hard to erase it by beating it, kicking it, gnawing parts of it out and throwing it against the wall, yet the presence is ever so resilient, still treating the narrator kindly.

The presence is symbolic for the self hatred and shame that the narrator faces even after the surgery, I’d argue even more so after the surgery. And this never ending standard of always trying to look a certain way, eating less and less to fit into society’s unfair expectations of proper body image never leaves the narrator, even after the surgery. It doesn’t leave even after her death and realization of where she went wrong because the narrator herself mentions that the presence will live on even after her death. The presence represents the never ending self doubt the narrator underwent due to her efforts in maintaining the looks. It’s significant also due to the time at which it formed. It only formed after the surgery, which leads me to believe that her feelings of self doubt and hatred became stronger after the surgery that’s supposedly supposed to fix everything in her life. She herself referred to her body as more honest before the surgery. In conclusion, I think the author implements the presence to highlight the narrator’s feelings about her body, her past self, and her scumming to society’s expectations. 

I was curious as to what kind of surgery the narrator went through exactly. She mentions bariatric surgery resting to weight loss which when I searched it up, gave me this image. It just made me think about the extreme that the narrator went through to fit a certain body image caused by the negativity surrounding her, especially in terms of how a woman should look.

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