Imagery of a decaying and filthy city
Throughout the novel's plot there is the imagery of a decaying and filthy Paris following it. The Algerian revolution left the city in ashes and there was disease and filth everywhere. It is described that in Paris life and death are intertwined; death smells like life and vice versa, life smells like death.
Tattoo imagery
Sailor Agone goes to a tattoo shop to get a tattoo. He is scared at first but, with tattooist's persuasion he gives in. The tattoo contains an image of a sailor ship surrounded by roses and an ocean. The coloring of the tattoo is described and compared by narrator-color red representing blood and life, brown representing death and blue representing the inhumane.
Rose stabbed with a knife
Towards the end of the novel Abhor draws an image of a rose being stabbed by a knife and below the rose there are words "discipline and anarchy". She does this after she takes a motor bike and an instruction book that Thivai criticized her into reading. She reads the redundant rules and tries hard to memorize them all the while behaving oppositely to the rules on the road which could relate to the phrase on the image she drew. A knife stabbing a rose can be related to her sexual frustration and need for Thivai, but also in relation to her being oppressed, taken advantage of as a woman.
