Romance and family
For the Tull family, romantic imagery is not the delightfully fun imagery of falling in love and living happily ever after. In fact, the words "romance" and "family" do not seem to capture the truth darkness that these imageries entail. For Cody, romance is a waking nightmare. He is like an incubus, womanizing woman after woman like a vampire, trying to get something from him that he cannot get. He is desperate for love, but he isn't sure how to get it. Ezra seems to get it, but Cody doesn't see that Ezra is emotionally intimate and willing to commit. He thinks it is just unfair. Ruth also struggles to turn a relationship into a family. Even the family itself is difficult to keep together as the title suggests.
Self-doubt
The imagery that defines the characters emotionally would be self-doubt. They may not admit it very often, but it is clearly at play in the imagery. For instance, Ruth is a healthcare professional who chooses to live with chronic emotional pain. Cody is clearly hoping for some sort of validation or approval, unsure whether it can ever work for him or not. Ezra and Cody's conflict shows that Cody does not have confidence. The self-doubt is the internalization of their father's abandonment. They are unsure how it reflects on their worth that he did not love them enough to stay.
Intimacy and trust
Because the betrayal of the father against the family was so damaging to the children, they struggle to trust others. In fact, one might say these siblings are downright paranoid. Cody is paranoid by competition because of his need for approval and encouragement. Ruth is averse to intimacy, and Ezra is extremely tender as a person, as if to say he too experiences the pain of intimacy and trust, but without the hard shell build around him to protect him. The family is so averse to intimacy that it takes an entire novel's worth of hard work just for Ezra to serve them all dinner at his restaurant.
Conflict and dysfunction
When the family comes back together, father included, for a dinner at Ezra's restaurant, Cody and Beck almost immediately end up in serious arguments. Their fighting is an imagery that demonstrates the subtle feelings that the family deals with. Cody is loudly proclaiming what everyone is feeling deep down. They are angry at him for his decision to leave, because of the emotional dysfunction that caused in their lives. By leaving the conflict of their marriage, the father dooms them to feelings of frustration and anger.
