“Neighbors”
In this story, metaphor is used poetically to describe the emotional state of a main character. It comes fairly deep into the story at a moment when the character is at a particularly fragile emotional state. The result is that the simile carries a great deal of weight and makes a very powerful connection with the reader:
“Aura’s heart sank like an anchor into an ocean of silence.”
“The Broken Web”
The domestic discord of this story all leads with a inexorable sense of encroaching dread toward its final paragraph which is pure metaphor as imagery. A certain indefinable sense of gothic existential anxiety hangs over the story so that one really cannot imagine it ending on a more literal and mundane note:
“Do you hear the crickets? Our mother warned us against killing crickets because they are the souls of condemned people. Do you hear their wailing, Martita? They conduct the mass of the dead only at night. You will say a rosary with me tonight, won’t you?”
“Miss Clairol”
This is the story of a single mother getting ready for a big Saturday night date while her young daughter looks on as an observer. The entire story is about Arlene’s preparations for the date and there is no kind of narrative payoff that tells what happens. The preparation is everything:
“From the open bathroom door, she can see Arlene, anticipation burning like a cigarette from her lips, sliding her shoulders to the ahhhh ahhhhh, and pouting her lips until the song ends.”
“The Cariboo Café”
Darkness is the defining metaphor of post-19th century literature. Start looking for it and you will understand how this assertion is true. Nearly every novel or collection of short stories features at least one reference to darkness that is not literal, but figurative. In this collection, darkness lives snugly within this story. The very opening line informs the reader that “They arrived in the secrecy of night.” As the story unfolds, darkness is first introduced in a purely non-figurative way which only serves to increase the anticipation of the moment it does finally show up:
“The darkness becomes a serpent’s tongue, swallowing us whole. It is the night of La Llorona.”
“Snapshots”
This story is narrated in the first-person by a character who is a little older than most of the protagonists in the collection. She is middle-aged and married and the marriage is over and done with as her husband up and left. It is a story without much in the way of plot or action; its power derives almost exclusively from the narrative tone which illuminates where this women is at her in her life at this particular moment in time. It is a type of storytelling that is dependent upon effective use of things like symbol and metaphor to convey a lifetime of events which had brought a person to a certain point:
“I realize all that time is lost now, and I find myself searching for it frantically under the bed where the balls of dust collect undisturbed and untouched, as it should be., To be quite frank, the fact of the matter is I wish to do nothing but allow indulgence to rush through my veins with frightening speed.”
