The imagery of Vietnam
We experience Vietnam imagery in this novel, especially in Quy's scenes which are told as flashbacks. For him, Vietnam represents hell, because he is trapped there, isolated from his family, perfectly helpless, and his story ends up shaped by survival. To survive, he joins a gang. To survive, he leaves the gang and joins the monks. Eventually he goes back home to his family, escaping to Canada, but in the end, we aren't sure whether he will survive or not, because ironically, Canada was way more dangerous for him than Vietnam.
Canada imagery
We learn in this book what life is like for the people who live in Canada, especially in the Canadian communities that blend many people groups together. This imagery comes through loud and clear, because the characters all have night-and-day experiences of Canada. In this novel, the children are refugees in a new place, so they are hyper observant.
The imagery of violence
In this novel, Jamal represents the problem of violence. All the depictions of him and his behavior show that he is being controlled by emotional impulses he doesn't understand. Eventually, those paranoias and the pain of his past suffering make him feel entitled to violence. This makes him do horrible things, and the reader has to witness them through the prose. Why? As a reminder that violence is a foolish answer to life's problems.
Pictures of religion
For Quy, life was so abominably difficult that after a life of slavery to his gang, he chooses the path of religious enlightenment. The reader has an important decision to make regarding this decision—as the imagery of Quy's religious curiosity unfolds, the reader must wonder, what would success look like? Perhaps the end of the novel is a tragedy, or perhaps Quy becoming like a martyr for his family's shared suffering, perhaps that is a kind of religious enlightenment.
