When the Lucy Goes Loco
There is a male character who is nicknamed the Lucy. Why? Good question and, fortunately, one that is answered directly, though through effectively offbeat use of metaphor:
"Because his favorite opera is Lucia di Lammermoor, and then he, like a woman, is mobile and goes insane asylum if he hears himself thus referred to.”
The Bureaucracy
A trip to the Compensation Bureau for the seemingly simple task of getting the money that is rightfully owed a widow in the wake of a husband’s death on the job turns into a metaphorical nightmare. That is to say, a real nightmare framed in metaphorical language:
“Files of human being went past her and her children. They were as herself. They were wounded and sought the helping hand of Christ's Christians. They were the roots uptorn, the stalks bent and shattered.”
Freedom
Paul is a victim of the myth of the American Dream which gets millions to invest whole-heartedly in the idea that work is everything one needs to find success. This concept is symbolized by the capitalization of the word Job as if it were a living breathing character created of pure possibility. Paul buys into it until he doesn’t:
“Job is freedom…for us.”
“Paul, the job is not freedom, Your wonderful brain is freedom…”
Job with a “J”
The capitalization of Job does eventually take on a spiritual aspect. The recurrence and the symbolic implication eventually cements the idea: work is the religion of America. Work is the thing which must be worshiped like people use to worship god because democracy and free enterprise makes the reward for belief possible within the mortal lifetime. But it is a slow process to that realization:
“Job was a game, a race, a play in which all were muscular actors serious from whistle to whistle, and he was one of them. It was pay-day, and in a few hours pay-check would sign short-short armistice. It was war for living, and Paul was a soldier. It was not as in marbles where he played for fun, it was men's siege against a hunger that traveled swiftly, against an enemy inherited.”
Italians
In a novel written by an Italian-American about Italian-Americans, one must surely expect at least a little metaphorical hyperbole in praise of the native culture. And the book delivers mightily on that score through metaphor:
"We are Italians! Know you what that means? It means the regal blood of terrestrial man!...We are the Glory of Rome, the culture! By us the rest are scum!”
