Confinement
Images of confinement are pervasive throughout these stories, though the presentation diverges individually. A fundamental thematic unity connecting many of the wildly different storylines and subjects is the inescapable reality that much tragedy in the world results less from character flaws than from emotional reactions to stressful conditions resulting from the imposition of oppressive conditions tantamount to metaphorical imprisonment. As a result of radical socio-political changes in society, the protagonist of the title story has had his very identity confined to one particular pejorative perspective of overweight white men. His counterpart on the opposite end of the spectrum of literal confinement is the lone soldier charged with protecting the vast desert borderline in “A Windmill in the West.” In the case of the retiree who spends five years constructing a scale model simulacrum of the town, confinement can even be a conscious decision on the part of the individual.
Confessions
The stories contained here are typically told either through first-person recollection of characters actively involved or a third-person narrator with a tendency toward social commentary on the proceedings. Among those related from the first-person perspective, the overwhelming bulk features a storyteller who at some point feels the need to directly appeal to the reader for understanding though some sort of confession or justification or pointed explanation of key information or events. The title story is unique in that most of it seems to be an example of a third-person type of narration, but it moves inexorably toward an ending which though written in third-person style is attributed very precisely to a single author who has been a character. In stark contrast is the opening line of the final story in the collection: “In the end I shall be judged.” In between these two extremes lies a story there the third sentence is “Here I am, a woman of thirty-five, and I still can’t handle a fool like Vincent” and perhaps the single strangest example of this imagery of them all. It is found in a story notably titled “Do You Love Me?” which perhaps is intended to be a clue as to the state of the nature of this narrational compulsion to explain things lest there be room for misunderstandings to blossom. “Perhaps a few words about the role of the Cartographers in our present society are warranted.”
Colonialism
Carey is famously viewed as a writer with a pronounced anti-colonialist edge and interest throughout his writing. In these stories, this theme is not pursued directly through political plots and topics, but rather obliquely through metaphor and imagery. The creepy old man narrating his seductive fantasies of the young woman with the odd doll fixation becomes in the end a figure of colonialist dominance and submission. The borderland in the Australian desert which the American soldier must guard before everything reaching out in one direction is considered the “property” of the United States is the perhaps the closet that Carey gets to an explicit exploration of colonialist concepts, but the other stories touching upon land, ownership and property utilization are inclusive within the imagery which the author uses to explore this theme of dominance, authority, submission, and exploitation.
Anonymity
Perhaps another key to solving the purpose of the pattern of confessional imagery is something else many of the first-person narrators share: a lack of identity. Only in this particular instance, the imagery is not limited just to those first-person accounts. The only character of significance in “A Windmill in the West” remains unidentified even by rank. He is joined in this club of anonymous central characters by the title figure in “The Last Days of a Famous Mime.” The first person storytellers of “War Crimes,” “American Dreams” and “Do You Love Me?” are hardly what could be considered insignificant participants in the particular narratives they write, but as distinct individuals with names, physical descriptions and personalities they simply do not exist. They may just as join the crowd of those anonymous third-person narrators who are not part of the story they are telling. This elements of the imagery is what makes it so fascinating for study; it is not just that important characters remain ciphers to one extent or another, but that Carey has precisely chose to pursue this line of imagery within the constraints of the storyteller.
