Metaphor for Maturity and Poverty
The novel can be described as a deeply personal bildungsroman of the author-narrator. In this narrative a recurring theme that is used as a metaphor for maturity and in a strange, indirect way, poverty, is work. The capacity to do work has always been the measurement of a person’s maturity; at the tender age of 5 he is commanded to do away with playing so that he can help his father out on the farm. His abrupt introduction into the working world paralleled with the equally abrupt cessation of play--in effect his childhood--is a loud, poignant message: playing and having fun is the activity of children and/or the rich. If you are poor then you work as soon as you can stand. You can only play if your parents can afford to let you play.
Metaphor for Hope
In spite of the difficulties and indignities that the author-narrator endures there is a clear and definite thread of optimism. The author-narrator, and by extension his family, put their hopes in two things: America and Macario. These two disparate concepts both operate as a metaphor for hope and betterment. In America, a person can rise above his circumstances through hard work and perseverance; this was what was “advertised” at least. Macario on the other hand embodies hope in that he is “the smart one” in the family, the sole child spared from the drudgery of farm work but given the immense pressure of shouldering the hopes of his entire family to bring them out of poverty.
Metaphor for Purity/Virginity
The author-narrator recalls a tradition carried out in their community where newly married couples are ushered into a hut and encouraged to have sex with all the wedding guests and relatives hanging around the hut waiting for a sign of the bride’s virginity. This sign that they seek is a plume of black smoke wafting from the hut. The new couple, after consummating the union, will light a fire and make black, sooty smoke emanate from their house indicating that the wife has entered into the marriage in a state of virginal purity, ergo, no smoke would mean that the wife has not been chaste. The smoke effectively becomes a metaphor for a woman’s virginity--ironically, a woman’s virginity becomes another metaphor in and of itself because of the other half of the ritual that is enacted in the unfortunate event that no fire is lit, and no smoke is produced.
Metaphor for a Woman’s Worth
If a woman is found to be not a virgin at the time of the bedding then the poor lass is dragged out of the hut, kicking and screaming, ironically, by her now outraged relations; many of whom were likely guests celebrating with her during the wedding ceremony. The unfortunate lass would then to be tied to the nearest immovable object to be beaten, flogged, and publicly humiliated. Virginity, therefore, transforms into a completely different matter--it ceases to become a metaphor for purity; it now becomes a metaphor for a woman’s worth, a woman’s value. A woman has no value it seems apart from her virginity.
Metaphor for Power
The novel is also a commentary on the dynamics of power, or as in the case of the author-narrator and his family, the lack of it. Power can be equated to two primary things: money and land. A person without money is effectively powerless. A farmer without land is effectively useless and powerless. These two things, unfortunately, are what the author-narrator and his family soon find themselves having none of; his father sells off parcels of his land bit by bit to cover for the family’s expenses and Macario’s education, eventually all of their property is sold and soon they have no land to farm and no income.
