Rural Kansas
The obvious imagery of the novel is the setting, because Smarsh talks about it plenty. It shapes her reality. Some people get to grow up in towns or cities, but Smarsh grew up on a farm in a very small town in Kansas, so that she didn't get to know a lot of people. She was limited in her social life, limited in her personality, and limited in her options, just because it was hard to find a community that she fit in with. Rural Kansas has its beauty, to be sure, but Smarsh notices that to some people, it can be like purgatory.
Agricultural machinery
The machinery of the agricultural world is an important kind of imagery verging on the sublime. Tractors and combines and such are fascinating, especially to children, but when she is older, she learns about serious accidents where farmers are mutilated and killed by such machinery. She realizes that the machinery is a symbol for the agricultural economic systems that govern her community and life, and she sees that many people live their entire lives without seeing anything except the farm, and then they die. The machinery is a suggestive imagery.
Poverty and immobility
Besides the farm life, there are other economic factors facing the family, like on years with poor harvests. The government helps when they need it, and she explains how this looked in real life and what the common misconceptions about welfare programs are in her opinion. The portrait of poverty and dependence has another layer that Smarsh explores: immobility. It is difficult to escape the small town life because it costs money, but there isn't an obvious way to get ahead.
Illness and mortality
For Smarsh, her ambient desire to get a better life for herself becomes increasingly urgent the more illness and accidents occur. She realizes that everyone around her will die, and so will she, and this fills her with dread, because she has an adventurous spirit and doesn't want to die without having experienced what life has to offer. She is scared of injury, illness, and death, and therefore, the imagery of death is like a fire underneath her, pushing her to work for a new future.
