Duality
The story at the center of the narrative is driven by the plot mechanics of duality; two men exchanging identities and the consequences. This aspect of duality is manifested in a variety of ways and in one particularly striking bit of repetitive imagery:
From Chapter I: “Profound quiet reigned in the forest, intensified, rather than disturbed, by the humming of insects; the very birds which had twittered and sung in the early morning seemed silenced by the heat; all creatures sought repose and refreshment at high noon on this glowing July day.”
From Chapter III: “Profound quiet reigned in the spacious quadrangle: even the poultry had retired to the barns out of the glowing sunshine and were silent. The courtyard was so lonely and deserted that its master grew tired of looking out of the window, and taking up a book he tried to read.”
Connective Imagery
Imagery is often engaged by the author as a way of connecting the end of one chapter to the beginning of the next. For instance, Chapter IX concludes on a figurative image of clouds:
“When the door closed behind him he passed his hand over his eyes as if to push away some cloud from his mind.”
The opening paragraph of Chapter X connects to that imagery with a literal description:
“The heavy clouds which had veiled the horizon in the afternoon had slowly covered all the skies, the night was very dark, the gloom only broken from time to time by dazzling flashes of lightning.”
Ironic Imagery
Literally the first spoken dialogue quoted in the novel are words of woe from an as-yet-unidentified man bemoaning the fact that his life has been nothing but excruciating unbroken periods of bright skies and beautiful splendor. He then makes a cosmic plea to live beneath a canopy of clouds illuminated by the brilliant flash of lightning every once in a while. Lighting flashes and all the massive power and potential damage therein becomes the dominant imagery of the events described twenty chapters later.
The Scarecrow
The dominant, resonating imagery associated with one of the major character is that of the scarecrow. He is referenced as looking like the familiar figure no less than four times two paragraphs and then multiple times afterward. The associational meanings universally shared relative to the scarecrow and his purpose is a vital component of this plethora of usage, but to say too much about exactly what is being implied by the subtext would be to give away too much. Suffice to say that the similarity between the man and the object implied by his appearance is not entirely unintentional and is quite thematically relevant.
