Vaseline Smudges
The halation created when the narrator tries to clean the window is compared to Vaseline's smudges. The narrator says, "When once I tried to rub clean the view using the edge of my sleeve, I instead created a halation effect, like the Vaseline smudge of Old Hollywood close-up.” While traveling across the desert, the narrator wants a clear view of the landscape, but when he tries to clean the window, it forms smudges, thus worsening the view.
Wallpaper
The narrator likens the outdated figurative speech of Juan to old-fashioned wallpaper. The narrator says, “He suggested, with sincerity, that I was one of the lam, but this was another figure of speech with which I was unfamiliar, and even after he explained, the entire notion of running and hiding seemed funny to me, as old-fashioned as the wallpaper.” The simile is significant because it shows the language barrier between the narrator and Juan. Juan is an elderly man living in his last days, and his speech is old-fashioned because he uses ancient metaphors and proverbs. The narrator agrees that despite conversing with Juan, he does not comprehend everything he says.
"The pure hard metal of fact made malleable by the alloy of his imagination" (111)
Here Torres compares the "truth" of a story to pure metal and the finished product of a story – a combination of the source material and of imagination – to an alloy. It is only the imagination that can alter the composition of the raw fact. This, Torres posits, is the singular and formidable power of fiction.
"Each new article like a shadow suddenly falling across her lap" (229)
Because Jan's father is always away, the majority of their relationship is based on what she reads about him in the newspapers. As he becomes more famous for his work, there is more frequent coverage of him, and the pieces loom over Jan, occupying a space between light and dark. There is an ephemerality in the choice of metaphor: shadows can be seen, but not touched; they appear at certain angles, but you might lose it if you move.
Between Life and Death
When Juan is nearing death, nene describes him as being "just below the surface" (259). Juan cannot quite see nene, "can't seem to stay up here, at the surface." Whereas death is often talked about in terms of slipping in and out of consciousness – life is something you are in, and death is that place you go when you fall out of life – the figurative language here introduces a new set of terms, above and below. In this metaphor, death is a literal threshold, like the surface of a body of water: to be afloat, head above the water, means to be alive, and death comes when you sink below the surface. There is a serenity to this kind of language as well as a deeper sense of a battle taking place; to die is less a slippage, and more akin to a drowning.
