A reflection of himself
When Campbell and Resi looked into “a store window that showed a great gilded bed”, the one very much like he and Helga once had, he was shocked. The pair of them was “ghostlike”. Not to mention that “the pale wraiths and the substantial bed formed an unsettling composition”. They were like real ghosts. The male ghost looked “God-awful old and starved and moth-eaten”, while the female ghost “looked young enough to be his daughter”. This imagery helps a reader to understand how Campbell looks, that his post-war self is a pale ghost in comparison with his old self.
Purgatory in an old attic
When Campbell settled down in New York, he rented “a depressing attic apartment with rats squeaking and scrabbling in the walls”. This was a place, suited a lonely man, whose sins couldn’t let him to live among other people. This imagery shows how much Campbell’s life changes without Helga. Before that, many years ago, they had their “kingdom of two” with “a great double bed” for them to share.
Mad people
Campbell remembers one trick his mother showed him many years ago. He thinks that “she was drunk most of the time”. Once she “filled a saucer with a mixture of rubbing alcohol and table salt”. Then “she touched off the mixture with a match”. Due to the color of the flame, “almost pure yellow”, she looked “like a corpse to me”. She said, “that what we’ll look like when we are dead”. This imagery shows a person in despair, who doesn’t realize what she does and what she says.
