Reading the novel as metaphor for a dream
The reading of the Perec's novel is a metaphor for the free-association of images that Freud talks about in Interpretation of Dreams. One witnesses the free association of images to induce a perceptional consciousness in the reader (who is awake) as the book unveils the feeling of deep dreamless sleep. This free association of images is disrupted by images that are literally described so that the reader becomes a thinking subject that can encounter the dream.
The middle class condition as metaphor for the situation in France
Perec's characters Jerome and Sylvie represent the condition of France as they aspire to become bourgeois as they think that would bring them happiness. Perec seems to believe that the condition of the middle-class describes contemporary France as they create the milieu in which the conditions of sleeping, waking and dreaming are underlined. In this way the novel is not a representation of ideas which the author has but a presentation of images without ‘the idea.’
The novel as metaphor for moving images
Perec has produced a cine-roman or cine-novel where images and sounds are produced through the novel. This is matched by the protagonists' love for the cinema. As the reader’s sensations move from one written word to the next, Perec invokes the cinematograph in its ability to produce cinematographic images. The theme of these images is time itself.
Writing as a metaphor for differentiating order and chaos
The first chapter describes the room in a state of order and as the novel proceeds elements of disorder i.e. elements from the outside world enter the world of the novel. In this way Perec seems to be arguing that every space is split between order and chaos: order represents the interior of the novel whereas disorder or chaos represents the exterior i.e. France, specifically Paris in the sixties. Coming back to perceptional consciousness, order represents the dreaming state whereas disorder represents the reality of the waking state.
