Ritual Connections
The narrator asserts, "Lony puts his hand to the earth there at the bottom of where he’d dug. It is cool. He thinks a thought in his head he wants to be a prayer. He realizes he doesn’t know what a prayer is supposed to feel like. He closes his eyes tight and says 'Thank you' out loud to the ground and wonders about whether the sound of his voice might carry into the ground, into the earth, toward the betterment, toward wanting things to be better. He says thank you again and feels the spinning and the building in his center’s center." Lony’s interaction with the earth while digging a hole represents his attempt to connect with something greater than himself. The coolness of the earth and his uncertainty about prayer signify his search for grounding and healing to cure his confusion and pain. This imagery highlights Lony’s deep yearning for improvement and peace.
Rosebush
Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield states, "The last job I did for Mrs. Haven was to take out her rosebushes. I was to clear them all and rip their roots from deep in the soil. Old coils of thick swirling braids of vine that whip back at you when you go to take them out. I chopped them down and they fell around me, scratching me as if in defense, then I gathered the remains in a burlap sack." Her task of uprooting rosebushes denotes her confrontation with painful memories and experiences. The thorny vines represent the entangled and defensive nature of her past while the act of clearing them signifies her attempt to move forward. The imagery of the rosebushes juxtaposes beauty with pain. It reflects the complexity of her journey and the lingering impact of her history.
Domino Dreams
The following passage uses the imagery of dominoes to illustrate the weight of familial legacy and the inevitability of being affected by it. It says, “Lony dreamed about dominoes. He dreamed that he was a domino tile, and that there were lines of dominoes as far as he could see, falling in rows that seemed to get closer and closer to him. In the dream he didn’t know when the line would come that would knock him over and end his life. He knew that being knocked over meant that, and that the line was his family line.” Lony's dream is a vivid representation of the inherited burdens and unresolved issues passed down through generations. The dominoes falling in an endless line represent the cascading effects of past actions and the inescapable fate that each individual faces as part of a lineage. This imagery indicates the sense of inevitability and helplessness that Lony feels.
Superblood and Thorns
The narrator states, “Lony is sitting in the rosebushes in front of their house. A thorn had just snagged his shoulder on the way into the bushes. The thorn had pulled at his shirt like the thing didn’t want him in. He is annoyed as anyone ever is getting snagged like that. He pulls up his shirtsleeve, pinches where the thorn dug in deepest as it slid across his arm, and watches the blood come.” This passage juxtaposes the physical pain caused by a thorn with the emotional and relational significance of Lony's blood. The thorn's resistance to Lony's entry into the rosebushes can be seen as the obstacles and pain encountered in life. This shift from physical pain to the life-giving importance of blood stresses the duality of pain and healing or sacrifice and salvation.
