Hero
At the end of the first chapter, Cullen fantasizes about attacking his bully, a boy named Russell and saving his younger brother from him. While in his fantasy he saves his brother from being bullied, in real life he is the one who in real life was the one who was bullied. Cullen portrays himself as the hero in his mind even though he is not a hero in real life. This proves that Cullen is dissatisfied with his life and that he wishes he were more of the hero type and less the coward he was perceived as being in real life.
Kids with shovels
Another important image is described in the second chapter when Benton the missionary saw a group of children with shovels over their shoulders. Benton was impressed by this image and asked his fried what they were doing. Benton was probably imagining that they were going to work in the fields or other similar action but he quickly found out that the reason why the children were carrying shovels was because they were going to dig up graves. Thus, the narrator paints here a cruel image, showing just how hard the life of the people and children living in Ethiopia really was and how little the people coming from privileged backgrounds understood about their life.
In the mud
Another important image appears after Gabriel disappears. Affected by his brother’s disappearance, Cullen becomes desperate and starts looking for him. In the end, he ends up on the bank of the river, covered in mud and in a state of confusion. When Louis found him, Cullen was uttering over and over again that his brother was dead and he had to be dragged home by his friend. The image invoked here suggests just how affected Cullen was by his brother’s disappearance and how much Cullen cared about Gabriel.
The woodpecker haircut
After everyone got excited about the woodpecker, the people in town began to get the woodpecker haircut, a Mohawk with the tips painted red. The image invoked here is that of a group of people who would do anything to profit out of the good thing that happened in their town. Thus, they were willing to promote it using their own bodies and using themselves as banners for those who might be interested in the bird that was thought to have been extinct but which was in fact not extinct.
