Smelling Seniors
The bulk of this story takes place when the narrator is a kid and his privileged, class-conscious parents are in their prime. It begins in the present day, however, when those same once vital and class-conscious parents are elderly. "They even smelled alike—a menthol scent, from the green vial of Vicks VapoRub they passed to each other, carefully rubbing a little in their nostrils and on aching joints." The point of this description which is constructed on sensory imagery familiar to many with aging parents is juxtaposition. The aged parents bear little similarity to the same couple in the prime of their prejudices.
Strident Privilege
The older woman who is stooped and smells of Vicks is almost immediately juxtaposed with her earlier self to the detriment of that earlier self. "My mother regularly shouted at them, for being slow, stupid, hard of hearing; even her bell-ringing, her thumb resting on the red knob, the shrillness searing through the house, sounded like shouting." This imagery is packed to the brim with efficient description of stridency personified. One gets a full picture of a privileged woman abusing her household staff simply because she can.
Class Consciousness
The narrator comes to a slowly evolving understanding of how class differences operate to control destiny when he compares the houseboy's room to his own. "I looked around his room and was struck by how bare it was—the bed pushed against the wall, a spindly table, a gray metal box in the corner, which I assumed contained all that he owned." This imagery of a spartan existence lived not by choice is precisely the real infection his parents fear. It is the real reason for trying to quarantine their son against the Apollo of the title.
Apollo
The title refers to conjunctivitis on a literal level. "When I woke up, my eyes refused to open. I pried my lids apart. My eyes burned and itched. Each time I blinked, they seemed to produce more pale ugly fluid that coated my lashes. It felt as if heated grains of sand were under my eyelids." This imagery of conjunctivitis works on two levels at once. It a literal description of the symptoms that he has contracted as a result of contact with Raphael the houseboy. It is also imagery in the form of a metaphor of how the parents want to keep him from opening his eyes and really seeing the ugliness of class discrimination.
