Cultural variation
This collection is also a curation of various cultures, brought into one book. There is everything from Shakespeare to Star Trek in terms of the art-entertainment spectrum, and in terms of geographical diversity, there are the eastern narratives that take the reader into India, British India, and into Muslim nations. In the western narratives, the stories are related to various times of history in the West, like the making of The Wizard of Oz, the discovery of America, and the writing of Hamlet.
Magic and relics
There is an imagery that takes normal symbols and elevates them to their ultimate value. For instance, in an auction, Dorothy Gale's famous slippers are being sold, and the alleged truth of their magic is making them rather expensive. That categorizes magic in terms of economic value, and in "The Prophet's Hair," a religious relic is of such divine worth and holiness that it drives the mind of a religious man into considerations on infinity that break his brain.
Human nature
The stories are vignettes describing through short story what the essence of human characters is. For instance, in "Yorick," the typical consideration (Hamlet lifting Yorick's skull in consideration of death) is reversed. Yorick is observing the young Danish prince in a position of entertainment authority. The question brings mystic attention to the strangeness of influencing children. In "Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella," the famous encounter is painted with an obviously sexual subtext where secretly, all Columbus wants is attention and approval from a powerful woman. Likewise, each of the other stories shows some essential quality of human nature.
Union of opposites
The imagery of opposites is at work in the books' titles within the collection. Book One is called "East," Book Two is, "West," and Book Three is "East, West." This suggests that the reader continue searching for unions of opposites in the stories, and they are very common. Chekov and Sulu are opposite in many ways, but mostly they are equal and opposite to Gandhi's assassins. They are the equal and opposite force of conspiracy. The union of life and death is on the schizophrenic's mind. Columbus and Queen Isabella seem interested in uniting their opposite natures into one "Relationship."
