Village imagery
Although this story is mainly about Master John, it is also shaped by the community he lives in. His community-facing role as a minister invites this imagery because he has a responsibility to each person in the community and to the community as a whole. As the village shares the experience of horror, suffering, and death, the people serve as diverse expressions of humans suffering in their own ways. Some people go mad with paranoia. The village imagery is completed by historically accurate depictions of their way of life.
Sickness as horror
With recent health epidemics like Coronavirus and Covid-19, this use of imagery is easily understandable. The imagery of sickness is obvious to anyone because, as Siddhartha's master taught him as a youth: There is no man who is immune from the ravages of sickness. However, the imagery is not sickness alone, but rather, the sickness becomes a concrete imagery for death which gives a sense of doom and horror to the community. It's never fun to get sick, but it is especially not fun to feel symptoms arising while all around you people are dying of illness. John sees this imagery every day for the duration of the plague.
Ministry to the public
The imagery which shapes the relationship between the protagonist and his community comes from his role as minister. As a minister, Master John is forced to serve the public, which is especially scary given the deadly nature of the plague and the sorrow which is evident in every family as the community loses people to death. The minister experiences people individually, but he also has his thumb on the pulse of the town since he has a broad enough experience of the public to understand the zeitgeist directly—a zeitgeist characterized by fear and sorrow.
Suffering and horror
The abstract imagery of suffering is given concrete roots in the historical facts of the Black Plague in Medieval Europe. In addition to this obvious use of imagery, there is a more subtle use of imagery as well: Since the disease leads to death in many cases, the fear of getting sick becomes an extreme dread that drives many people insane. Once the disease is caught, the sickness is defined by a fear of death. The horror of suffering is death, which leads to naturally intriguing conversations about God's loving will. How can this minister defend a God who seems to be torturing the public that John was sent to serve? That is the defining imagery of the book since it shapes the tone of the novel.
