Movie Metaphors
A movie-loving character named Michael conceives a thematic connection to some of the horror films made by Hollywood in the wake of the collapse of studio censorship. “Look at John Carpenter’s The Thing , with its screaming fetal heads! And what about the old classic Rosemary’s Baby, for God’s sake, and that silly movie It’s Alive, about the monster baby who murdered the milk man when it got hungry. The image was inescapable. Babies—fetuses. He saw it everywhere he turned.” The imagery of the monster from these movies is forwarded as evidence of Michael’s thesis that the horror films of this period were dominated by monsters that resembled babies. While there may be some accuracy to this imagery, Michael has his own issues related to abortion that is fueling his perception.
Dread
Michael is also the character whose thoughts lock onto the imagery produced by dread. As an abstract noun, dread has no tangible sensory attributes, but Michael does not see it that way. “Everything around him was gray. Nothing tasted good or looked good. It was as if a metallic gloom had gripped his world, and all colors and sensations had paled in it.” With this contemplation, Michael endows this abstract noun with a visceral hue ironically constructed from the lack of vivid color. The feeling of dread thus becomes the absence of color thereby suggesting the absence of life.
Nihilism
Nihilism is also an abstraction devoid of inherent sensory elements. This means, by definition, that it is wide open to interpretation. “It was like dipping a stick into the ocean and trying to write something—all the little people of the world spinning out little patterns that lasted no more than a few years, and meant nothing at all.” The central protagonist of the novel, Rowan, finds herself caught in a swirling vortex of downward movement as a result of an existential dilemma in which daily life seems to mean nothing but loneliness and meaningless effort. The desperation and even foolishness of the imagery of trying to write in the water perfectly summarize the movement toward nihilism.
