"Like the air we breathe" (Simile)
Vance notes that even though the people in his city had financial stability, almost none of them believed that their children could one day go to college and pursue something other than manual labor. Vance notes that this idea was so common that it was like the air that these people breathe every day. This comparison shows just how prevalent this pessimism was in his community.
T-Bone Steak (Metaphor)
Vance remembers once seeing one of his poor neighbors buying a T-bone steak for dinner with food stamps. Vance remembers thinking that the neighbor was taking advantage of the federal welfare system by buying something so expensive instead of spending his money on healthier, more nutritionally diverse food. For Vance, the T-bone is a metaphor for the perverse "wealth" that people on welfare enjoy at their own nutritional and financial expense, and to the jealousy of their employed neighbors.
Eraser (Metaphor)
While in Iraq, Vance remembers meeting a young boy. Vance gave the young boy an eraser and the boy was overjoyed. The eraser is used here as a metaphor for opportunity: it makes Vance realize that his life is so much better than those of many people in the world, but that even a mere eraser can be a tool that equips children to be successful.
Like the boy with the eraser, Vance is looking for the community support he needs to overcome his circumstances and succeed.
Drugs (Simile)
Vance compares his relationship to his mother's fights with her spouses or boyfriends to a drug addiction: he is unable to stop listening in on the fights or even intervening himself. Thus, he ironically finds himself as helpless in the face of his mother's fighting as she is in the face of the drugs to which she is addicted.
Putting Your Thumb on the Scales (Metaphor)
A friend of Vance's who worked in the White House suggests that, although there is no clear solution to the problems of the working-class in Middle America, his and Vance's job as upwardly mobile policymakers could be to "put their thumbs on the scales" for individuals who seek to rise above their circumstances. This quote uses a scale as a metaphor for a child's chances of success, and suggests that, by putting a figurative thumb on this scale, people like Vance might be able to tip the scales in favor of that child's success.
