“Mama’s Boy”
Jeff Hobbs writes, “So Rob went to Oakdale, where by Skeet’s reckoning he would learn to stop being a mama’s boy and become a man respected, listened to, and followed by other men.” The phrase a “mama’s boy” is emblematic of a soft lad who portrays restricted masculine attributes as a result of being swayed and raised by his mother. Such a boy is principally unaggressive.
“Salty Manager”
Hobbs explains, “Like a salty manager, Skeet worked with the boy intensely. He taught Rob to swing his rams laterally from wide angels, so that a fist to the temple could be followed by an elbow to the chin.” The allegorical saltiness renders Skeet a foul individual intent on implanting a belligerent mind-set in his son. He programs his son to be an aggressive man instead of edifying him about the standards of chivalry.
“Warped Incarnation”
Hobbs explicates, “ Three years: three years during which Skeet waited in jail along with all the other accused murderers and rapists and paedophiles of Essex County - like a new warped incarnation of the neighbours he’d once spent his afternoons chatting up along the avenues of East Orange.” The rhetorical incarnation surmises that Skeet is accustomed to the prison life to the degree that he considers the other prisoners there to be his neighbors. Three years is an ample duration for an inmate to be habituated to prison life.
