Family and intimacy
The stories converge around depictions of family. For characters like Rose Mallow, in "Bingo Man," family is the absent imagery that she desires in a tantric way. For "The Premonition's" protagonist, Whitney, family is an absurd conspiracy with people pretending to be good but who are actually quite horrifying. This depiction of family as a necessary evil makes every day life into a horror story.
Animals and human nature
The imagery of human nature is set against the depictions of animal interactions with humans. Humans can be attached to animals, but in patronizing ways. Through the stories, the imagery suggests that how humans see animals is a strong metric for the health of their soul or self. For instance, Florence's story is strangely absent of animal nature, and she turns into a doll. But Miranda obsesses with a cat and ignores her own animal instinct to be united to other humans. She pretends she's a cat. When Bibi is an annoyance to the family, they think it's alright to kill the dog, but the doctor sees the horror of their opinion.
Horror and spirituality
The use of horror is a method for examining spiritual ideas. The hair-raising imagery of the stories in their use of confusion, perplexity, and fear makes the spiritual strangeness of human life more obvious. This is never more true than when humans try to become intimate with each other in these stories. By linking their selves to other humans, they have to be more objective about what a human really is, and what they are by proxy. For characters like Rose Mallow, that sounds like a horrifying proposition.
Personality and self
In "The Premonition," Whitney learns something about his family; their nature extends far past the performance of their personalities. He sees they have evil and conspiracy in their nature, as well as capricious tendencies and malice. Then, Florence in "The Doll," finds herself perfectly limited by the performance of personality that she does so well. She is struggling to see that her self extends far past the limits of her personality. This is thematic, so the imagery of self appears in different ways throughout the collection.
