Like Mother, Like Mother

“[W]hatever she did or said, it seemed inevitable. She was Detroit to the end. She always had your back.”

Joe describes Lila at her memorial service, likening her to the city of her birth. Lila carried a switchblade, never apologized, and was loyal. Lila didn’t criticize or apologize. In many ways, she seemed like a force of nature: certain and immovable. Thus, her actions felt “inevitable.” Lila was also constant and predictable, which lends further “inevitability” to her actions and choices. The metaphor comparing Lila to Detroit reinforces the novel’s exploration of place as identity—just as the city is tough, unyielding, and resilient in the face of decline, so too is Lila, shaped by her upbringing in an unforgiving environment. This also connects to the motif of the pathologization of women, as Lila’s emotional reserve is seen as an inherent trait rather than a survival mechanism.

“You can finish your dinner on the floor like the vermin you are.”

After Lila asks Aldo if he killed Zelda, he smacks her so hard that she falls to the ground, and he compares her to vermin via metaphor. Lines like this help to characterize Aldo as a brutal, cruel abuser, and they help readers to understand what Lila’s childhood was like. This is the man to whom Zelda abandoned her children, helping to explain why Lila had to believe Zelda was dead in order to carry on with her own life.