Opening Lines
A hint about the extent to which a novel is going to rely on imagery is almost always right there in the opening page. If the opening lines of a novel are dense with imagery, then one can almost always expect that the entire book will be laden with such descriptive prose:
"In the beginning were the howlers. They always commenced their bellowing in the first hour of dawn, just as the hem of the sky began to whiten. It would start with just one: his forced, rhythmic growing, like a saw blade. That aroused others near him, nudging them to bawl along with his monstrous tune."
Murals
Diego Rivera is a major character in the novel. And as a result, murals play a major role in the imagery of the novel. After all, Rivera is synonymous with the extraordinary large-scale artistry of the mural:
"Outside their doors on the hallway walls, Mexico bleeds and laughs, telling its whole story. The people in the paintings are larger than the men in the offices. Dark brown women among jungle trees. Men cutting stone, weaving cloth, playing drums, carrying flowers as big as brooms. Quetzacoatl sits at the center of one mural in his grand green-feathered headdress."
What Good is Art?
One of overarching themes of the novel is exploring the question of what purpose art serves in society. At one point, this theme is explicitly raised and addressed in, of all things, a transcript from a interrogation conducted by HUAC during the height of the absurd communist witch hunt of the 1950's:
"The purpose of art is to elevate the spirit, or pay a surgeon's bill. Or both, really. It can help a person remember or forget. If your house doesn't have many windows int it, you can hang up a painting a have a view. Of a whole different country. If your spouse is homely, you can gaze at a lovely face and not get in trouble for it."
Trotsky's Fate
The setting of Mexico not only allows for the Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo to become characters, but also Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky. It was in Mexico where Trotsky found himself after being exiled in the wake of losing the in-fighting civil war with Stalin. And the imagery of his home there becomes symbol of his state:
"The high, dark walls enclosing it come together at a point, looking exactly like the dark prow of an ocean liner: the great, slow ship of Trotsky's fate setting sail down Churubusco, as if it were still a canal in the city on a lake, as Cortes found it. As if one could still build a ship in the desert, and set one's sights on a new world."
