Final Thoughts
On the last page of this novel—strange place to start the imagery, but it’s impactful—the narrator is summing things up. He is contemplative and philosophical about the nature of humanity which has been displayed over the trek of the narrative. The imagery may seem odd to those unfamiliar with the allusion. The allusion is to the poem “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats.
“The world is getting weirder. Darker every single day. Things are spinning around faster and faster, and threatening to go completely awry. Falcons and falconers. The center cannot hold.”
Vampires
The novel starts off sounding very much like a hard-boiled detective story narrative in the first person. Before long, however, it is revealed that the detective is listed in the Yellow Pages under “Wizards.” And then come the vampires and if imagery has ever seemed to be invented for just one purpose, that purpose might well be describing vampires:
“It had a batlike face, horrid and ugly, the head too big for its body. Gaping, hungry jaws. Its shoulders were hunched and powerful. Membranous wings stretched between the joints of its almost skeletal arms. Flabby black breasts hung before it, spilling out of the black dress that no longer looked feminine. Its eyes were wide, black, and staring, and a kind of leathery, slimy hide covered its flesh, like an inner tube lathered with Vaseline, though there were tiny holes corroded in it by the sunlight I had brought with me.”
Demons
Preceding the arrival of Buffy and the Scoobies by a certain number of years, there are not just vampires afoot in this particular Sunnydale. (The story’s not really set in Sunnydale, but Chicago.) The story also features demons! And imagery is even more important for describing demons than vampires since everybody pretty much knows what a vampire looks like by now. But demons, well, that’s idiosyncratic. As for Bob, well, one Bob is pretty much like another, isn’t he?
“The demon watched what was happening in the circle with froggy eyes and kicked a section of floor clear enough of debris for it to squat down on its haunches and stare, restless and ready as a cat waiting for a mouse to stick its head out of its hole. Susan stared up at me with sultry eyes and tried to wrench me to the floor, and consequently out of the circle's protective power. Bob continued to wail his innocence.”
It had to be Scorpions
Indy has his snakes. The narrator of this tale has his scorpions. The only imagery Indy provides is forthright: he hates them. But Harry Dresden, most likely because he is narrating his own story, digs a little deeper into his imagery to touch upon the mythological as well as the anatomical:
“Scorpions were symbolically powerful in certain circles of belief...If you wore it next to your skin, as such things are supposed to be worn, the prickly legs of the thing would be a constant poking and agitation at your chest, a continual reminder that it was there. The dried stinger at the tail's tip might actually pierce the skin of anyone who tried to give the wearer a hug. Its crablike pincers would catch in a man's chest hair, or scratch at the curves of a woman's breasts. Nasty, unpleasant thing. Not evil, as such—but you sure as hell weren't likely to do happy shiny things with magic with such an item around your neck.”
