Where Language Falls Short: Myth and the Narration of Vulnerable Bodies Across Time

García and Ducay (Punzadas Sonoras) suggest that philosophy and literature are often placed on opposite sides—the former associated with objectivity, the latter with subjectivity. However, rather than existing in tension, both ways of approaching the world need each other. Philosophy may establish the ground, but it is literature, through its own language and particular interpretation of the world, that is able to say what cannot be fully expressed by other means. Hence, literature moves beyond philosophy, filling those spaces where conceptual language falls short and meaning would remain incomplete. This paper comparatively examines how the experience of vulnerability as inscribed in and through the body has been narrated and interpreted across history. Drawing on Metamorphoses by Ovid, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, it traces earlier configurations where transformation appears as a form of divine intervention or punishment, latter interpretations that frame vulnerability as social exclusion, and finally contemporary narratives that are anchored within biopolitical or posthuman contexts. I contend that these texts depict a gradual shift in the ways this experience becomes intelligible. In this sense, myth functions as a flexible mode of expression through which this experience is continuously rearticulated across different historical contexts. Thus, its persistence across time lies in its capacity to make certain forms of vulnerability visible beyond the limits of conceptual language.