The Dubois foil
Bob and Eddie can be seen as foils for each other's characters. Eddie demonstrates the hopelessness and frustration of life as a business owner among the politically and economically complex South. Bob is essentially similar to his brothers because they shared a childhood home with each other, but Bob is different. When things look hopeless, Bob bends the rules, kind of like an archetypal hustler. Bob is also naive about things that Eddie knows all about, at least at first.
The allegory of tacit involvement
Bob's story can be seen as a narrative allegory against tacit involvement with unjust systems. He participates in a criminal underground motivation by money and intrigue, but his tacit involvement comes back to haunt him when a split-second moral injunction leaves him shot and killed. Apparently, it is better not to be naive. Also, the risks of ignoring broken social dynamics is shown to be ultimate in this symbolism. His relationship to Marguerite is particularly telling.
The blood guilt
In a way, the novel confronts Bob's broken character and makes him announce his voluntary participation in life. Typically, he is shy to implicate himself, and he spends a lot of time "getting away with stuff." As a new Floridian, he feels detached from the broken race relations of the deep South, but the novel forbids him from passiveness by pitting him against a Black robber in a competition of life and death. Bob shoots and kills the robber, thus implicating himself in the ongoing conversation about ethnic harmony and globalization.
The innocent prostitute
In contrast to Bob's insidious yet somewhat respectable identity, we see the other protagonist in parallax. Vanise Dorsinville's path crosses Bob's when they are both committing a crime, but Bob ends up dying as a result of his participation, while Vanise goes on to live and to succeed in life. This is probably the novelist providing commentary on their innocence and guilt. Although Vanise's life is literally the archetype of shame, she is making the best of an unjust and hopeless situation, whereas Bob is exploiting his opportunities in an unethical way.
The abandoned wife
The symbol for Bob's unethical decision-making is actually Marguerite Dill, his lover. Their affair is intriguing to the always curious Northerner, and he entertains Marguerite and becomes intimate with her. Eventually, one thing leads to another and she becomes pregnant. At this critical crossroads, Bob's relationship to responsibility is revealed: instead of accepting responsibility for his actions, he gets bored of that and walks away, dehumanizing Marguerite in the process.
