The Imagery of “Mental Archaeology”
The narrator asserts, "The story that I'm about to tell you is the product of my own mental archaeology. Of course, like all great digs, how the artefacts fit together in a timeline is about as immediately clear as which things are important and which are not. Some parts of this story I have always remembered. Others were buried deeply, and some I simply never knew about and have only recently discovered." The process of recollecting historic memories is analogous to the archaeological process of excavating and reconstructing artefacts. However, all memories would not be excavated since some may have disintegrated. The mind is comparable to an archaeological site from where the artefacts are excavated.
The Imagery of Half-Houses
Auerbach writes, "Those who spend any amount of time driving on interstate highways will see half-houses traveling alongside them. It's an odd sight if you let yourself think about it; two halves of a house built somewhere miles away from where it becomes a home. Everything about those structures has a feeling of impermanence." Clearly, the imagery of the houses alludes to the extreme poverty of the residents who cannot afford to put up permanent structures. Specifically, the term 'half-house' implies that the narrator and his mother did not reside in a descent, modern house.
Footsteps
The narrator recounts, “In a quiet room, if you press your ear against a pillow, you can hear your heartbeat. As a six year-old boy, the muffled, rhythmic beats sounded like soft footsteps on a carpeted floor, and so as a kid, almost every night - just as I was about to drift off to sleep - I would hear these footsteps.” The footsteps connote heightened consciousness. Evidently, they terrify the narrator because he interprets them as a human being walking. Listening to his own heartbeats make the narrator to be extremely alert and sensitive at night.
Fear
The narrator confirms, “ It didn’t take long for these games to become reflex, and the fear would appear without any effort at all. Some nights I would spill into the house so frantically that it would startle my mother, but this was the winter of the first grade of elementary school so I tried to compose myself and pretend that I was merely worried about getting home too late." Fear of abandonment conditions the narrator to arrive home early. The darkness elicits fear that he is late he may find no one at home; hence, he will end up lonesome. The fear is unconscious for it elicits the narrator's automatic spilling and hurrying. Accordingly, staying out in the dark makes him unease to the degree that he hurries home lest he is abandoned.
