Table of Contents
As a literary and film analyst, I’ve learned that the most potent stories are the ones that linger, the ones that plant a splinter in your mind you can’t quite dislodge.
For me, that story was Luca Guadagnino’s 2022 film, Bones and All.
I left the theater shaken, heartbroken, and strangely uplifted.
The film’s devastating climax—the young cannibal Maren Yearly consuming her dying lover, Lee—felt like a perfectly rendered, albeit gruesome, tragedy.
It was, I thought, a sacrament of fated love, a final, desperate act of union against a hostile world.
I explained it as such to friends, confident in my interpretation.
It was a beautiful, coherent, and complete emotional arc.
My confidence was misplaced.
My understanding was incomplete.
The splinter arrived when I sought out the source material, Camille DeAngelis’s 2015 novel.
I opened the book expecting to find the blueprint for the film I so admired.
Instead, I found a story with a different heart, a different philosophy, and a profoundly different, more horrifying, answer to the central question.
In the novel, Maren eats Lee for a reason that shatters the film’s romantic paradigm.
The discovery didn’t just add a new layer; it revealed that my entire framework was built on only half the truth.
There wasn’t one story of Bones and All; there were two.
The query, “Why did Maren eat Lee?” seems simple, but it has no single answer.
Its resolution is a duality, a paradox contingent entirely on which text one is examining.
The film portrays the act as the ultimate, tragic expression of love.
The novel presents it as an act of monstrous, predatory inevitability.
To truly understand this pivotal moment, one cannot choose a side.
One must dissect both realities, exploring how a single story can be so fundamentally transformed in its journey from page to screen that it acquires a second soul.
This report is the chronicle of that dissection, an attempt to answer the consuming question, bones and all.
In a Nutshell: The Two Realities of a Final Act
For those seeking a direct answer, the divergence between the film and the novel is the essential context.
The reason Maren eats Lee is entirely dependent on which version of the story is being considered.
- In the 2022 Film: Maren eats Lee at his explicit request after he is fatally wounded during a fight with an antagonist named Sully.1 His death is imminent, and his final wish is for her to consume him “bones and all” as a symbolic act of their eternal union. Here, the act is a tragic, consensual sacrament—the ultimate expression of their love and a way for him to become a permanent part of her.2
- In the 2015 Novel: Maren eats Lee involuntarily after he makes a romantic advance toward her in bed.5 In the book, her cannibalistic urge is an uncontrollable compulsion triggered by receiving affection and intimacy.6 The act is not a choice but a horrifying manifestation of her condition. It is the story’s ultimate tragedy: her deep-seated need for love is the very thing that causes her to destroy the person she loves most.8
Part I: The Cinematic Sacrament – Consumption as Tragic Love
Luca Guadagnino’s film is a masterclass in thematic engineering.
Every significant choice—from screenwriting to cinematography to musical score—works in concert to guide the audience toward a single, powerful interpretation: Maren eating Lee is a devastating but beautiful act of love.
It is not a horror film with a romance subplot; it is a romance that uses the grammar of horror to explore its themes.4
The Architecture of a Doomed Romance
From its inception, the film adaptation was conceived as a love story.
Critics and creators alike consistently frame it as a “cannibal love story,” a “coming-of-age story,” and a romance that explores the lives of marginalized outsiders.4
Director Luca Guadagnino, known for his intense explorations of love and desire in films like
I Am Love and Call Me By Your Name, was drawn not to the cannibalism itself, but to the characters.
He saw a story about “disenfranchised” kids “fighting morally…
about who they are” and struggling to “find a place for love”.12
This directorial lens is the foundation upon which the entire film is built.
Friends of the director even interpreted the film as being “all about mourning…
the impossibility of your relationship with your partner” and the “aim for an idyllic impossibility of romanticism”.13
This romantic interpretation is reinforced by the film’s aesthetic.
The journey across the American Midwest is rendered not as a grim, desolate landscape but as a place that feels “inexplicably enigmatic,” a beautiful and atmospheric backdrop for a fated romance.11
The score, composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, plays a crucial role in shaping the audience’s emotional response.
Guadagnino speaks of their “beautifully loving” themes, particularly the guitar-driven melodies that underscore the couple’s connection.
The music is strategically deployed to create empathy, even in moments of darkness.
As Guadagnino explains, when Lee confesses a traumatic event, the music becomes “super sweet and very very full of love,” a choice made so that the audience remains “open to him”.14
This careful manipulation of sight and sound ensures that the audience’s primary emotional investment is in the central romance, not the horror.
The Outsider’s Condition – Re-engineering the ‘Why’
To build a viable love story upon such a gruesome premise, the filmmakers had to make a fundamental change to the story’s core logic.
Screenwriter David Kajganich identified the novel’s central mechanic—Maren’s hunger being triggered by desire—as an obstacle to the story he wanted to tell.
He explains, “I wanted there to be a very clear feeling…
that they didn’t really have much of a choice”.15
Framing cannibalism as a desire would imply agency and make cannibalism the subject of the film.
By reframing it as an uncontrollable
need, an “affliction” they are born with, the focus shifts to the characters and their struggle to connect despite their condition.10
This single, critical adaptation choice functions as a sympathy engine.
It removes the moral complication of Maren being a direct threat to those who love her and instead positions her and Lee as victims of a shared, tragic fate.
Their condition becomes a powerful metaphor for any state of “otherness” that isolates a person from society.
Critics have noted its resonance with the experience of the LGBTQ+ community, addiction, or simply the universal adolescent feeling of being an outsider.4
Their love is born not from a shared pathology, but from the profound relief of finding the one other person who understands their isolation.4
They are not monsters choosing to love; they are lovers cursed to be monstrous.
This philosophical shift was essential.
For a mainstream romance to succeed, the audience must be able to root for the lovers.
The novel’s far more challenging moral framework, where love itself is the catalyst for destruction, was incompatible with the romantic tragedy Guadagnino and Kajganich aimed to create.
Lee’s Final Gift – A Union Beyond Death
The film’s climax is the ultimate expression of this romantic re-engineering.
In a stark departure from the novel, Lee is not a passive victim of Maren’s urge.
He is fatally wounded by the predatory older eater, Sully, while heroically defending Maren.1
This crucial plot change externalizes the immediate cause of death, absolving Maren of direct culpability and transforming her subsequent action from an attack into a response.
Lee’s death scene transforms him into a sacrificial figure.
Mortally wounded by an external evil, he consciously offers his body to Maren.
His plea—”eat me”—is presented as a knowing, loving choice.
He recognizes that he is going to die and wishes for it to be on his own terms, in a way that ensures he will “still be with Maren forever”.17
Actress Taylor Russell, who plays Maren, describes the act as “incredibly romantic” and “a gift that he gives her,” calling it “the most loving act” possible within the unique framework of their world.3
The consumption itself is handled with a focus on emotional intimacy rather than graphic horror.
The camera lingers on their faces, on the tragedy and love of the moment, rather than the gore.2
Guadagnino himself describes the final kiss as deeply ambiguous: “Is it a kiss of love or a kiss of annihilation? Is it a kiss of eating the other or a kiss of falling into the other?”.13
This framing elevates the act to a sacrament.
Lee’s willing sacrifice of his body allows Maren to achieve a form of spiritual and emotional salvation.
It is the final step in her journey toward self-acceptance, a moment of growth and maturation born from his love.2
Through this act, they achieve a union beyond death, a way to “become one with each other”.2
The film’s final, dreamlike shot of the two of them together on a sun-drenched hillside is widely interpreted not as a literal event, but as a symbolic representation of this eternal bond—a memory of the “home” they found in each other that Maren will now carry with her forever.18
Redefining “Bones and All”
The film also fundamentally redefines the meaning of its own title.
In the novel, eating someone “bones and all” is a literal, almost supernatural ability of the eaters.17
In the film, this idea is introduced through a menacing side character, Jake, who speaks of it as a transcendent, “life-changing” rite of passage.1
This recasts the phrase from a physical act into a powerful symbol.
For Maren and Lee, two inexperienced eaters still grappling with their identities, the concept of eating someone “bones and all” represents the ultimate commitment—both to their nature and to each other.2
It is a threshold they have not yet crossed.
When Lee, in his dying moments, asks Maren to eat him this way, he is not just asking her to feed.
He is asking for total consumption, total union, and total acceptance.
He is asking her to fully integrate him into her being.4
By fulfilling his request, Maren is not only honoring his final wish but also completing her own coming-of-age journey.
She is finally, fully embracing her identity as an eater, no longer running from the most extreme aspects of her nature.
The act signifies that she has grown and is now ready to face life alone, carrying him with her.2
Part II: The Novel’s Horror – Consumption as Predatory Inevitability
To turn from the film to Camille DeAngelis’s novel is to step through a looking glass into a darker, colder world.
The characters share names and a basic affliction, but the story’s soul is entirely different.
Where the film builds a romantic tragedy, the novel constructs a work of moral horror.
Here, Maren eating Lee is not a sacrament of love but the horrifying, inevitable culmination of her monstrous nature.
The Author’s Intent – A Vegan Critique of Predation
Understanding the novel’s ending is impossible without understanding the author’s philosophical intent.
Camille DeAngelis is a committed vegan, and she has been explicit in interviews that she wrote Bones & All as a way to force readers to confront their own participation in systems of predation, specifically the consumption of animal flesh.21
Her goal was not to tell a love story but to use the ultimate taboo of cannibalism to provoke a question: “Am I okay with being a predator? Is that really who I want to be?”.22
She hoped the story would act as a “switch” in the reader’s mind, making them consider that “every time we eat flesh, we’re eating the body of someone who didn’t want to die”.22
The novel is, at its core, a polemic disguised as a young adult horror story.
While DeAngelis acknowledges that the story must come first, she admits the vegan subtext, which she felt was “way too subtle in the novel” for many readers, is the foundational logic of the entire narrative.21
This intent recasts the story’s events.
It is not about the tragedy of being an outsider; it is about the moral horror of being a predator.
The Nature of the Beast – Intimacy as the Inescapable Trigger
The engine of this moral horror is the novel’s central, unchangeable rule—the critical point of divergence from the film.
In the book, Maren’s cannibalistic urge is not a constant, ambient need.
It is a specific, compulsive response triggered whenever someone “cares for her too much” or initiates romantic or sexual intimacy.6
From a boy who flirts with her at camp to one who holds her hand in his car, affection is the switch that flips, turning her from a shy, lonely girl into a voracious eater.7
This mechanic creates a devastating paradox that is the true heart of the novel’s tragedy.
The very thing Maren craves most—love, connection, intimacy—is the one thing guaranteed to turn her into a monster and destroy the object of her affection.
It makes a genuine, physical, loving relationship an impossibility.8
Her deep connection with Lee is therefore doomed from the start, not by external forces or societal prejudice, but by her own intrinsic, inescapable nature.
Love does not conquer her monstrosity; it unleashes it.
This framework operates on a logic akin to “original sin.” Maren’s condition is an inherent, inescapable flaw.
Her desire for love, a fundamentally good and human impulse, is irrevocably corrupted by this flaw, leading inexorably to destruction.
The Final, Monstrous Act
The novel’s climax unfolds with chilling inevitability.
There is no heroic battle with Sully, who was dispatched by Lee earlier in the narrative.5
Instead, the final confrontation is between Maren and her own nature.
In their shared bed, Lee makes a physical, romantic advance, embracing her and, in doing so, signaling his consent to be eaten.5
Maren then eats him in her sleep.5
It is an involuntary, compulsive act, the final, tragic fulfillment of her condition.
She awakens to find she has destroyed the one person she truly loves, not as a gift, but as a consequence of her monstrous nature overwhelming her humanity.8
This act is not redemptive; it is damning.
And the novel’s conclusion is unambiguous.
After eating Lee, Maren does not find solace or a deeper, symbolic connection.
She finds a horrifying form of freedom.
She fully accepts and embraces her identity as a predator.
The final pages see her living on a university campus, where she deliberately seduces a male student with the clear intention of killing and eating him.5
She is no longer a victim of her urges; she is now an active, conscious hunter, the very monster she spent her entire life fearing she would become.7
This ending also serves as a dark subversion of the “man-eater” trope.
Throughout the novel, Maren is a literal man-eater, but one who is horrified and traumatized by her actions, not empowered by them.29
She is a girl who “devour[s] her complex feelings toward men instead of finding a way to healthily cope”.29
The ending shows the terrifying conclusion of that journey: a complete surrender to her predatory nature.
It is the tragic fulfillment of the trope, stripped of any glamour and revealed as a state of profound moral monstrosity.
Part III: A Comparative Synthesis – Reconciling Two Realities
The film and novel of Bones and All begin in a similar place but arrive at destinations in different universes.
They use the same core premise to tell stories with opposing philosophies.
Analyzing their differences reveals not only the heart of each work but also the profound power of adaptation to transform a story’s very soul.
Divergent Paths to a Shared Fate
The journey from page to screen involved a series of deliberate, cascading changes.
It began with the foundational decision to alter the trigger for cannibalism.
By shifting it from a response to affection to a constant, ambient need, the filmmakers made the protagonists more sympathetic, allowing a love story to blossom where the novel only permitted a tragic paradox.
This initial change necessitated others.
Lee’s backstory was rewritten to make him more heroic and relatable—killing an abusive, cannibalistic father instead of a merely annoying teenage girl.1
Sully was changed from Maren’s biological grandfather to an unrelated predator, simplifying the family trauma and sharpening his role as a straightforward antagonist.5
These alterations culminate in a completely reimagined climax, where Lee’s death is an external tragedy and Maren’s consumption of him is a consensual act of love, rather than the novel’s horrifying, involuntary conclusion.
The result is two distinct narratives, each with its own internal logic and thematic purpose.
Table: A Comparative Anatomy of Bones and All
The following table distills the crucial divergences between the novel and the film, providing a clear, side-by-side comparison of the elements that define each version’s unique identity.
| Feature | Novel (DeAngelis, 2015) | Film (Guadagnino, 2022) |
| Cannibalism Trigger | Receiving affection/intimacy 6 | Inherent, uncontrollable need/hunger 15 |
| Lee’s Backstory | Vague family dysfunction; murders a girl for annoying him 26 | Kills his abusive, cannibalistic father to protect his sister 1 |
| Sully’s Identity | Maren’s biological grandfather, stalking her 5 | An unrelated, predatory older “eater” 1 |
| Circumstances of Lee’s Death | Consumed by Maren’s involuntary urge after they become intimate 5 | Fatally wounded by Sully; asks Maren to eat him as a final act 1 |
| Meaning of “Eating Lee” | Maren’s monstrous nature overwhelming her humanity; a predatory act of compulsion 5 | The ultimate act of love, union, and acceptance; a tragic sacrament 2 |
| Maren’s Final State | Accepts her predatory nature; actively hunts a new victim 5 | Ambiguous; heartbroken but has achieved a new level of maturity and acceptance 9 |
| Core Genre/Intent | Moral horror; a vegan-inspired critique of predation 21 | Romantic tragedy; a story about marginalized outsiders finding love 4 |
From Moral Polemic to Romantic Parable
The differences laid bare in this table are not accidental; they represent a fundamental shift in purpose.
The novel is architected as a moral polemic—a story designed to provoke a philosophical argument about the ethics of predation.
Its core mechanic (love triggers destruction) is intellectually provocative but emotionally challenging, even alienating.
The film, in contrast, is architected as a romantic parable—a story designed to evoke a powerful and relatable emotional truth about love and alienation.
To function as a mainstream film and a vehicle for its charismatic stars, the story needed to be emotionally accessible.
The filmmakers had to sever the novel’s link between love and destruction to make the romance viable.
They transformed a story about the impossibility of love into a story about love against impossible odds.
Remarkably, this radical transformation received the blessing of the original author.
Camille DeAngelis has expressed her delight with the adaptation, calling the screenplay a work of a “wonderful, kindred spirit” and stating that she loves every change that was made.24
She views the film not as a flawed translation of her work, but as a distinct and valid piece of art that exists alongside her novel.
This underscores a vital truth about adaptation: success is not always measured by fidelity, but by the power and coherence of the new creation.
Conclusion: The Two Answers, Bones and All
We return to the central, consuming question: Why did Maren eat Lee? The answer, we now see, is not a statement but a choice of texts.
It is a duality that lies at the heart of what Bones and All Is.
In Luca Guadagnino’s film, Maren eats Lee because he is dying, and he asks her to.
She eats him as a final, desperate, and beautiful act of love, a way to unite them forever and grant him a death on his own terms.
It is a tragic sacrament that solidifies their bond beyond the grave.
In Camille DeAngelis’s novel, Maren eats Lee because her love for him, and the intimacy they share, triggers an uncontrollable and monstrous compulsion.
She eats him because she is, by her very nature, a predator, and in this final, horrifying act, her monstrosity irrevocably conquers her humanity.
The two versions of Bones and All are not merely different tellings of the same story.
They are thematic opposites that use the same characters and premise to explore conflicting ideas about love, nature, and monstrosity.
One is a story of love finding a way to triumph over a monstrous nature, even in death.
The other is a story of a monstrous nature that makes love impossible, ultimately consuming it.
A complete understanding requires one to acknowledge both realities, to hold these two contradictory souls in the mind at once.
The true answer lies not in choosing one over the other, but in consuming the narrative in its entirety—bones and all.
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