IJ study archive

The Blood Sister finale — "with Blood Sister giving a good…"

quote

with Blood Sister giving a good account of herself but still getting her wimple beat in and finally, after several whirling kicks to the forehead, starting to bid adieu to her corporeal map and commend herself to the arms of God

Context

In the Act III office free-for-all, the idiom gets its most explicit gloss anywhere in the book: "her corporeal map" — the map is the body, named as such, and demapping is the soul's forced departure from it (she commends herself "to the arms of God" as the map goes). The film says plainly what the street usage always implied.

In anthology