"A Life in Exile"
A Life in Exile is the fictitious non-fiction book that Gabriel, Jr, writes. His father rejects his work publicly in a scathing review. The purpose of the book as a symbol is that it symbolizes the part of Gabriel, Jr, that his father rejects most: his thirst for truth. Since Gabriel, Sr, has ghosts in his closet, he doesn't like his son's ravenous appetite for truth.
Sara Guterman
Sara Guterman is the part of reality that Gabriel, Sr, spends his whole life avoiding. He doesn't like to think that he participated in one of the greatest moments of evil in all of human history. He doesn't want to think that perhaps his collusion with the government constitutes betrayal of his own people. In this case, Sara Guterman represents the real damage of Gabriel, Sr's delusional and complicit participation in history.
The affair
The father senses that he is dying. He wants to confess to someone, but he only knows how to get close to people one way. The affair represents Gabe's father's honest attempt to connect with someone before he dies—behind his wife's back. The juxtaposition of honesty (confessing his secret) and dishonesty (...to a mistress) is at the center of this symbol. He is morally compromised.
The heart surgery
The heart surgery and subsequent death can be seen as metaphors, although the reader should be careful—sometimes people just get sick. Not every illness can be seen this way. But nevertheless, in this case, it does seem that the father's illness is symbolically connected to his guilty conscious, especially since he ends up dying in the climax of the story. It seems that the heart issues represent the shortsightedness and fatality of his limited, dishonest point of view.
The motif of criticism and scrutiny
When Gabriel, Jr, writes a powerful non-fiction book about scrutinizing the Holocaust, criticizing the human hatred, corruption, and evil. His father scrutinizes that work of scrutiny. His mistress scrutinizes the legacy of the father, and the public scrutinizes the past. This motif is a reminder to the reader of the book's major theme: Honesty. We should not treat our information, our media, our news, or our history as if they were written by honest people. The author seems to be encouraging us to seriously scrutinize our assumptions about reality.
