The underworld
Inanna believes that she will be safe to travel into Kur, the underworld, but just in case, she accrues the blessings of various other deities, because it is scary and dangerous. The idea is clear: once she is descended into the depths of the underworld, she is dead to Heaven and Earth where she reigns, and yet, for honor, she descends anyway. The underworld is haunting and full of darkness and the sublime, and her time there is intimidating—even to a goddess.
The pantheon
The implied imagery of the novel is that the universe operates with a pantheon of major and minor deities, akin to Greek or Mesopotamian pantheons. This novel uses that idea as its bedrock, which lends a mythic, legendary quality to the story. She goes through the story with her family around her, but just as humans can be capricious, so can the gods and goddess of the story, so she often feels paranoid that someone will try and do something to harm her or trap her in hell.
Death and mourning
Her brother-in-law's death brings about the story as its inciting incident, and by traveling into the underworld to attend his funeral service, she openly faces the likelihood of her own death. This forms an imagery around death, because she is constantly threatened by the plausibility of death. Many other people die in the story, and in the underworld, she encounters ghosts of the dead who often try to help her with various success.
Independence
The character Inanna is a portrait of independence, because she braves a journey that no other being would dare to try, based on her own intuition and power, and she doesn't depend on anyone as a queen. She is a self-sufficient being who often rejects help from those who have ulterior motives. Her character provides an imagery of independence that is confident without being condescending, and surprisingly humble and personable.
