We Are Called to Rise Imagery

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The ice cream truck

For most kids, the ice cream truck is a good thing. For Bashkim, the truck represents his unwavering commitment to make the most of life. He is sweet like the ice cream. This innocence reappears when his mother is killed holding an ice cream scoop.

The imagery of hidden violence

There is a sense in which violence appears explicitly in the novel, for instance when Bashkim sees his own father beating his mother. But what's worse is that to the rest of the world, this kind of violence can happen in private, without witnesses, without resources to help. The novel depicts the violence throughout the novel as paranoid and tragic.

Las Vegas imagery

When Roberta is reminiscing, she recalls the way in which the bright lights of Las Vegas represent something different to most people than what they mean to her. To her, they're a representation of the fact that tourists rarely see the difficult underbelly of the city. Nevertheless, the strip and the scenes of Las Vegas tie the story together.

Imagery of justice systems

Many of the characters work for justice systems. There are military people, police officers, social workers and judges in the cast. This constant attention to the government is supposed to indicate that this type of sociological issue like untreated paranoia and PTSD is a government issue, because it often escalates to new tragedy, new violence, and an even more unstable situation. The question is how can the government do that effectively, given that many officers are traumatized too.

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