Family as a need
For James Piper, family was more than a desire. He felt he needed a family, so he just made one, without the consent or approval of the wife's parents. He selects for himself a young Lebanese bride, only thirteen years of age, and he gets to work building a family with her. The family is formed, but is he better off than he was before? The imagery of family is shown in a disturbing light, because his emotional need for a support network led Piper to predatory behavior.
Dependency and perversion
The full-blown display of Piper's imbalances is even more tragic than this set-up. By the time his dependency is fully developed, he realizes that his predatory desires for taboo relationships has grown to an incestuous pedophilia. His chronic feelings of low self-esteem and self-pity have left him in a dependent relationship to his family. He starts the novel with a taboo relationship to a thirteen year old, and by the end of his character development, he is desiring her child daughter. He abandons his family because the perversion is disturbing even to himself.
Dysfunctional religion
The parents' concern isn't even limited to their daughter's age, although it is concerning. They also feel that Piper's community will encourage a religious dysfunction. This makes religion an important imagery in the novel, because the family attempts to combine communities with two different cultures. That is not impossible, but in this relationship, it quickly becomes "tainted" by Piper's dysfunction. When his desired Lolita (so to speak) dies in childbirth, Piper takes comfort in the birth of his twin grandchildren who are then killed in a baptismal accident. The daughter's symbolic death has the makings of a symbol; she contracts illness from water that was not pure, signaling all the moral compromises that define Piper's life.
Tragedy and death
The deaths of various members of the family are portrayed in a tragic imagery. The suggestion of this abstract imagery is that the concrete deaths of the novel are references to abstract verdicts of justice against James Piper. This is similar to Greek tragedies like Antigone where the death of children symbolizes the hubris of the father. This happens to Piper, and when his grandchildren die, that is a fateful comment on his eligibility for legacy.
