Home
The young girl who is the narrator, Summer, has bounced from home to home with relative after relative after being orphaned. When she first sees what will become her permanent home with Uncle Ob and Aunt May, it is a trailer that looks "like a toy that God had been playing with and accidentally dropped out of heaven. Down and down and down it came and landed, thunk, on this mountain, sort of cockeyed and shaky and grateful to be all in one piece." The simile and subsequent metaphorical imagery apply directly to a rusty old trailer. On a deeper level, however, the cockeyed and shaky quality of her new home applies to the overall domestic situation as well.
Cletus, the Cross-Dimensional Traveler
Cletus Underwood is a classmate of Summer. Her attitude towards him is summed up in the fact that she calls him "crazy Cletus" and one of the contributors to this nickname is his conviction that he has crossed over into the dimension of the afterlife. Upon hearing Cletus describe his experience, "Ob wanted to keep Cletus here like he was installing some afterlife antenna on the place." The metaphorical image of Cletus as receiver of messaging from heaven is the thing which stimulates Ob to search out an actual medium to allow communication with his dead wife.
Unwanted Orphan
Until she finally winds up with Uncle Ob and Aunt May, Summer is handed from one relative to another. "I’d been treated like a homework assignment somebody was always having to do." The simile comparing herself to homework is subtly appropriate. Like homework, caring for the young orphaned relative is seen as an expectation of work and effort lacking any significant payoff.
Grief and Mourning
After her Aunt May passes away, Summer's Uncle Ob spirals into depression and despondency that leaves her helpless as she attempts to help him deal with the situation. "Guidance came to me in the form of a greasy-haired lunatic, and now, desperate, I am passing him the torch, hoping he can lead us out of this infernal darkness, this place none of us can anymore call home." The lunatic with the greasy hair is Cletus. The torch she is passing to him is getting Uncle Ob through his grief. The hellish darkness is that stage of mourning from which Ob seems unable to move on.
Good Grief
Cletus is actually useful for helping Summer deal with the depressive state of grief. "Cletus was wearing his hat with the fake fur earflaps, and once I got a crazy urge to giggle when I thought of those flaps flapping and Cletus rising up like Charlie Brown’s Snoopy and flying across the garden and away." The comparison here is to the famous beagle from the Peanuts comic strip who was sometimes portrayed imagining himself flying through the air spinning his long ears around like helicopter blades. This image is at least enough to stimulate laughter capable of alleviating Summer's grief at least briefly.
