What vision, a view, from up so high.
Roselily imagines how the view form her new flat in Chicago would like. Having lived in Mississippi her whole life, where every one knew her and her history of having children out-of-wedlock, she welcomes the prospect of having a new start in her life. The imagery of being in a flat literally above everyone translates into a metaphor of desire of wanting to be free from her chores and a life where she was not respected.
New Southern houses
The narrator in the story, ‘Really, Doesn’t Crime Pay’ describes the new house her husband has bought in a way that reminds one of something dead and decayed and not as a ‘beauty’ as her husband says. She describes the bricks as cubes of meat, windows as narrow beady eyes, yard as an undressed wound. The description adds to the metaphor of a dead marriage.
Domestic violence
In the story ‘The Child Who Favoured Daughter’, the Father in the end is described of holding a gun and rocking it like a baby. At this point, one knows that he had led to the suicide of his wife, and had beaten up his daughter brutally. At the realization that she might still have some guts to stand up to him, mutilates her by cutting off her breasts. The shock of the violence adds to this image which translates into him picking violence as if it were the child that he is supposed to protect unlike his family.
Slavery
Though none of the stories were set in the time when slavery was legal, the history is evident in the imagery. Roselily compares the gathering at her wedding to cotton which was one of the main businesses in which slaves were used. Myop finds a corpse with a noose around its neck signifying it as a slave that has been sentenced to death. The imagery becomes more visible through the words of Dee and Jerome who are educated and can put words to their history.
