“René’s Flesh” dwells on the spiritual detachment of man and the prevalence of the carnal as the sole reality. Sex is here seen as an absence bordering on the impossible, especially for the female character of Dalia de Pérez, also a synthesis of a Piñerian vision of the feminine cosmos and the purely physical.

Antón Arrufat believes that as a “reactive artist,” René’s physical attributes reflect the antithesis of Piñera’s body.

In addition to these impressions, the novel constitutes an investigation into and within the mechanisms that produce alienation, which haunts the character who remains to a certain extent unscathed despite his weakness, especially through the cruelty that threatens his physical integrity, the only reality and reservoir of all human pleasures and pains.

René’s life becomes a perpetual escape from the School of Pain, flagellation, and a whole religious sense alienated from the carnal, in a way akin to bourgeois morality but also rooted in pre-capitalist human society; however, his ultimate transformation and even his leadership of the secret society reflect the death of the utopia of liberation, the tragic impossibility of escaping circumstances.

The text, however, opens up to a multiplicity of readings. In a certain sense, suffering is the way in which man becomes aware of the world, and this is what René is also trying to convince himself of. Insensitivity, then, is an example of dehumanization, the loss of the axiological compass, in an ethical quagmire that is only imitation and exteriority.

The aforementioned impossibility of escaping alienating circumstances stands out in the text, although Piñera also creates a playful labyrinth that interweaves elements of the absurd but also real human behavior. His vision is ambiguous, both encouraging rebellion and simultaneously announcing its sterility, marked above all by irony.