A Hellish Inferno
Mill work is throughout portrayed by imagery associated with hell; allusions to Dante’s Paradise Lost mix direct descriptive prose that portray the working conditions as:
“city of fires, that burned hot and fiercely in the night. Fire in every horrible form: pits of flame waving in the wind; liquid metal-flames writhing in tortuous streams through the sand; wide caldrons filled with boiling fire, over which bent ghastly wretches stirring the strange brewing; and through all, crowds of half-clad men, looking like revengeful ghosts in the red light, hurried, throwing masses of glittering fire.”
The Korl Woman
One of the most essential images in the story—as equally vital to plot as to theme—is the statue made by Hugh. Its discovery by Mitchell the reporter, Doctor May and the mill owner’s heir it the pivot upon which everything changes for the main characters. As such, it was incumbent upon the author to portray this work of art—the korl woman—in a way that makes an impression upon the reader if not necessarily equal to that of the characters, at least vivid enough to understand that impact:
“a woman, white, of giant proportions, crouching on the ground, her arms flung out in some wild gesture of warning. There was not one line of beauty or grace in it: a nude woman’s form, muscular, grown coarse with labor, the powerful limbs instinct with some one poignant longing. One idea: there it was in the tense, rigid muscles, the clutching hands, the wild, eager face, like that of a starving wolf’s.”
“a bare arm stretched out imploringly in the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine: a wan, woeful face, through which the spirit of the dead korl-cutter looks out”
Biblical Imagery
The story has been categorized by some critics as an example of a Christian conversion narrative while others point to the story’s ending with Deborah experiencing a spiritual redemption through a full conversion to the Quaker practice as somewhat undermining the inherent social criticism. That redemption of Deborah is but the most direct intrusion of Christian imagery in the story, coming on top of imagery alluding to:
Pontius Pilate with Kirby’s assertion that as businessman, “I wash my hands of all social problems,—slavery, caste, white or black.”
The parable of Lazarus the beggar with Hugh’s recognition that “there was a great gulf never to be passed” between him and Mitchell.
The gospel of Matthew when the narrator’s assertion that he merely desires to “show you the mote in my brother’s eye: then you can see clearly to take it out” by relating the tale of Hugh Wolfe.
Clouds
Images associated with clouds open and close the story and are pervasive throughout. The opening line is a rhetorical inquiry into what a cloudy day means in a mill town. The closing line describes the statue of the korl woman, now calling the narrator’s library its home, as appearing as though she “points through the broken cloud to the far East, where, in the flickering, nebulous crimson, God has set the promise of the Dawn.” Hugh Wolfe’s hope and desire to find a kindred spirit recognizing the message his art tried to gives as a “cloudy fancy” and at the moment that he dies at his own hand inside jail, his cell is flooded with a celestial glow as the moon reappears from behind a cloud.
