The apartment
The setting of the narrative provides more than just setting. In fact, the imagery is symbolic, because the protagonist is emotionally unable to attain the lifestyle she wants because her desired profession is to be a successful artist, but she doesn't have the confidence in herself to trust herself or advocate for her art boldly. That means that her childhood dysfunction has placed her in an apartment with thin walls where everyone else is also struggling to make ends meet, which spawns dysfunction. The real effect of this setting is that the character is chronically triggered by sounds of emotional abuse and serious fighting.
Broken families
The imagery of broken family is what provides the fodder for the rest of the novel. The Stories are "built" by finding threads of meaning in fractured narratives. The literal fragmentation of the book in its physical form is proof of this imagery. In fact, it is the imagery of the novel breaking the fourth wall. The imagery of brokenness is thematically connected to art. The unnamed subject of the plot struggles to believe what the book proves in its very existence—that patience and endurance can lead to the completion of serious and worthy art.
Art theory
The novel is metanarrative, and so its commentary on one artist's experience is broadened to be a generalized theory of what art is an how it serves the community. The artist has a thread in common with the people around her, but she struggles to believe in her ability to authoritatively capture taht struggle in a way that will be received. Clearly, the answer is to become an advocate for her own self, that way she can simply make art from her experience. That is the art theory that the imagery of the plot suggests.
Self-esteem
The crisis preventing our hero from attaining her maximized potential as an artist is that she struggles to accept herself and the difficult decisions she has made. Sometimes she feels that external reality is responsible for her psychic turmoil, but then sometimes she succumbs to serious bouts of shame and confusion. Her self-esteem is an imagery of crisis in the story, because she cannot decide what she believes about her own suffering. In time, this will make good art, as the author could probably attest. Chris Ware seems to understand the struggling artist motif very well, which makes the book's existence a response to this psychic imagery.
