The motif of cheating
There are three separate instances of infidelity, one in each generation. Miles's mother took a suitor when he was a kid, then Janine left Miles for Walt Comeau, and Tick, Miles's daughter, leaves Zack the bully and starts hanging out with the emotionally unstable John Voss. This motif could be signifying many things at once, but most importantly to Miles, it challenges him to look for a solution to the constant antagonism and betrayal in his community.
The allegory of the unhappy wife
Janine's story can be seen as an allegory, because it follows a clear format. A small town wife settles in with her husband, and they have a child. The guy goes to work every day, leaving the wife alone, bored. He comes home tired and uninterested in her. Over the course of two decades, she becomes overweight, and she silently holds it against him. Eventually, the emotional damage of her obesity becomes to much, and she overcomes that hurdle, but since she viewed Miles as the cause of her problems, she becomes hateful and vengeful. Miles (especially at the end of the novel) has the choice either to play the victim, or to accept responsibility for his neglect. Perhaps he is emotionally distant because he has Mommy-issues that he has never talked about.
The symbolic title
The title "Empire Falls" is a subtle allusion to apocalyptic literature, like the Bible's Book of Revelation. Apocalypse is typically defined by the downfall of an empire. Therefore, the reader is offered the option of reading Empire Falls as a story of catastrophe, downfall, and apocalypse. One reason to read it that way would be because the characters in the small town are feeling it that way. For a small town business owner to close his doors after decades and decades of business—that is both tragic and horrifying, even if it doesn't seem like the end of the world in the grand scheme of things. It's the end of a certain kind of world.
The Empire Grill
The family business, the Empire Grill, represents something to Miles. For one, it literally represents his success as a small business owner, but it also represents his attachment to his family. However, the novel is about the brokenness within his family, so the Empire Grill must also represent something negative. Perhaps Miles invested himself in the Grill at the expense of his personal life.
The bully and the jock
The novel contains a nice picture of high school life where Zack Minty (the jock) mistreats the emotionally unstable John Voss (who is admittedly kind of a weirdo). This is a microcosm for the way the town turned on itself once businesses started to fail. One problem is that instead of viewing the communal challenges in Empire Falls as communal, the town divides against itself and stops supporting businesses. Then the economy stops. Tick understands this in a limited way through her experience with Zack and John.
