“There are also trams here. In them, the ambition of the city councillors has achieved its greatest triumph. The appearance of these trams, though, is pitiful, for they are made of papier-mache with warped sides dented from the misuse of many ears. They often have no fronts, so that in the passing one can see the passengers, sitting stiffly and behaving with great decorum.”
The dilapidated trams are exhibitions of the city councillors’ depravity. The councillors have not preserved the superlative excellence of the trams that would safeguard the passengers’ cosiness and restricted exposure. The passengers are perceptibly distraught as a result of the trams’ deplorable settings. Evidently, the transport segment is not discharged from the ‘crocodiles’ of degeneracy.
“Our hopes were a fallacy, the suspicious appearance of the premises and of the staff were a sham, the clothes, and the salesman had no ulterior motives. The women of the Street of Crocodiles are depraved to only a modest extent stifled by thick layers of moral prejudice and ordinary banality. In that city of cheap human material no instincts can flourish no dark and unusual passions can be aroused.”
Fraud business is conventional in the city; hence, one may not anticipate not to find untainted dealings because fake commodities are inescapable. Besides, the women are also subject to the degradation of the city; thus, they must submit to it for them to endure. Corruption has flowered incalculably, which rules out the prospect of human instincts that would counter fraudulent propensities.
“It happened during the gray days that followed the splendid colourfulness of the father’s heroic era. These were long weeks of depression, heavy weeks without Sundays or holidays, under closed skies in an impoverished landscape. Father was then no more with us.”
This is the exposition of “Cockroaches” which portrays the solemn mood in the family following the narrator’s father’s passing. The gray imagery and economic strain validate that the narrator and his mother withstood severe conditions in the absence of the father. The grayness outshines the positivity which the heroic epoch embodies.
“But even at the time, I could not tell whether these pictures were implanted in my mind by Adela’s tales or whether I had witnessed them myself. My father at the time no longer possessed the power of resistance.”
The tales relate to the narrator’s father’s psychosis. The narrator’s incapability to remember whether he experienced the incidences of insanity renders him unreliable. The unreliability displays the intricacy of the father’s condition. Obviously, memories can be embossed in one’s unconscious based on the chronicles that he perceives. As a result of implanting, incredible memories may seem to be factual. Accordingly, unconscious memories are not unconditionally faultless.
