Opening Paragraph
The opening paragraph sets the backbone of the foundation upon which the plot will unfurl. The protagonist, Isaac, is making off with money stolen from his father. It is late in the morning as he tries to furtively gets through the woods without drawing undo attention to himself. The final two sentences of this paragraph are metaphorical imagery which situates the emotional tension of the moment:
“The nuthouse prison-break. Anyone sees you and it's Silas get the dogs.”
Conversational Metaphor
Metaphor is used in conversation every day by most people. The language of metaphor has become a dependent part of the modern vernacular. While it can often take the more formally recognized style of written metaphor, it can just as easily adopt a more allusive form requiring a greater need for context to parse. When one of the drifters notices Billy Poe’s football letterman jacket, his commentary is quite literal, of course, but within that surface meaning lies a deeper metaphorical accusation about Poe’s failure to capitalize on his natural athletic gifts:
“I used to change oil at Jones Chevy and we'd watch the games after work. Thought you'd be outta here. College ball or somethin.”
Complex Metaphor
Some of the writing in this novel gets quite complex in its construction. Although the author has occasionally been compared to the master of long sentences, William Faulkner, he clearly is not in that league. But every once in a while, the reader will stumble across a single sentence overflowing with more ideas than many writers can seem to put into an entire paragraph. In this case, the metaphors and similes to just keep rolling, gathering up speed and size like a snowball rolling down a mountainside:
“Their father treated Isaac like a foster child, because he, Henry English, was a big man from a line of big men, because Isaac had a curious mind and Henry English did not, and while those same faults, smallness and fine-mindedness, were acceptable in his wife and daughter, when they appeared in his son it was as if everything he had to offer, everything he had valued in himself, it had all been submerged under the character of his wife. Including her Mexican coloring, which both children had inherited.”
The American Dream
In one respect, the novel is a portrait of the American Dream as it is actually lived. Not quite a nightmare, but definitely at least as far away from a glorious nighttime vision as from a menacing and sinister inversion. It is a portrait of the American Dream as something becoming more and more unattainable:
“It was like this all up and down the river and many of the young people, the way they accepted their lack of prospects, it was like watching sparks die in the night.”
Death of a City
The death of a city is slow and agonizing and what it looks like by the time it is on life support is nothing at all like what it looked like when things were in the pink. Anyone who has been inside a municipal city office building built since the 1960’s at least would never confuse it for anything else. Such was not always the case in America:
“The original city hall had been condemned years ago and several times Poe had broken in and walked around inside; it was a large red brick building that looked like a castle, iron windows, wood paneling inside and dental molding, it looked like the home of a rich person, a place you could respect yourself.”
