Gift of food
Lazaro mentions the fact that after his father died, things were though for his family and especially for his mother who had to sustain financially her child. To do this, she had to do various things including prostituting herself, the only way through which a woman could earn a living. When she found a job as a servant, she was courted by another servant, a black one. He managed to convince Lazaro’s mother to marry him and the way he did it was by bringing her food and fire wood. The two elements are used here to symbolize the basic needs a person has, namely nutrition and a place to stay and when Lazaro’s mother realized that the black slave was able to offer those things to her, she agreed to marry him despite their differences.
Dark skin
A motif found in the novel is the idea that black skin was usually associated with unpleasant things and unpleasant attributes and even within the black community there was a distinction based on how dark a person was. For example, Lazaro’s step-brother, who was half black, was scared of his own father because he had a really dark skin. For him, his father’s skin was synonymous with evil and he felt the need to get away from it.
Symbol for pain and pleasure
An important element in the story is the presence of wine and Lazaro develops a taste for wine since an early age. After discovering just how much he enjoys drinking wine, Lazaro began stealing wine from the blind man until one day he was caught and the man hit Lazaro with the jug of wine, cutting his face in the process. Thus, wine is used here to symbolize both pleasure and pain and to sustain the idea that in our world, everything has a hidden side to it.
The person who tries to fool others
A common motif in the novel is the idea that if a person tries to manipulate or fool another person, he will end up in the same position sooner or later. To support his claim, Lazaro gives as an example his first master, the blind beggar who made a living out of fooling the honest people who thought that he was helpless. In a similar way, Lazaro manipulated the blind man and it is because of his manipulation that he was finally able to escape from his influence.
Symbol for moral corruption
At the end of the first chapter, Lazaro tricks the blind beggar into jumping head first into a statue that was before him. The reason why Lazaro did that was because he wanted to escape the blind man’s influence and be more independent. But the action is also a symbol here in the sense that it marks the beginning of Lazaro’s destructive tendencies and his willingness to do everything to succeed in life.
