Racial imagery
The novel depicts the world using race as a kind of sense, because it's all that people can seem to see or think about in the south lands of Florida. We know that Clare is half-black and half-white, and she falls somewhere in the middle of the black-white spectrum, and her brother is lighter—even passing as a white man sometimes, and her sister is darker, like her mother. Identity is rarely separated from race, because it dictates how they are treated.
Chaotic imagery
There are depictions of the wild, of human instinct, and even Clare's name is Savage—all pointing to the instinctual response against chaos. Clare is traumatized by life, just like Bobby, and they connect and compare and contrast their struggles, but the struggles are thoroughly examined. The chaos of the wilderness is partnered with the chaos of Clare's internal thought life, which is chaotic. They are simply haunted by chaos.
Jamaican imagery
The families of this novel are thoroughly Jamaican, and proud. Jamaica represents home to the characters of this story, a kind of Eden, ruined by greedy men and cowardly government officials. The scene of Jamaica is depicted as a tragic loss, and when Kitty moves back to Jamaica with Jennie, Clare feels a part of her will always remain in Jamaica. She returns to the imagery of Jamaica literally, to die in the jungle their fighting for the country.
War imagery and PTSD
Trauma is explored in many ways, but especially through the use of imagery depicting combat warfare and PTSD, like Bobby's stories, his injury, and also Clare's combat awareness at her racist school, and then literal combat awareness in the jungle of Jamaica, where she literally does warfare against the forces of evil, so to speak, dying there as a martyr.
