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Metaphor
Explanation and Analysis—Votive Candle:
In his first chapter as narrator in Part III, Daniel Gonzales writes an email to his brother Manny, who has passed away. In the letter he describes his new 3-D-printed guns, as well as his emotions, particularly on the subject of their mother, who is severely depressed. Daniel depicts their mother's depression metaphorically through the image of a votive candle dropped on the floor:
The other day she dropped a votive candle on the kitchen floor [...] shattered, and she just left it there in pieces. [...] all out there in the living room like your picture on the mantel [...] feels like it cuts me whenever I see it, how you graduated from high school and we all thought [things] would be okay from then on because you did.
Ms. Gonzales dropping the votive candle represents her relationship with her family. She dropped the candle on the floor, an inciting incident. But then she left the broken pieces of the votive candle spread out dangerously across the floor. This shows that the physical consequences of an action are often just as dangerous and harmful as the action itself. Daniel tells Manny that his picture on the mantle "cuts deep," which elaborates the comparison of the dropped votive candle and the memory of Manny. The metaphor, as a whole, describes Manny's death as dropping a votive candle, with the consequences and grief not dealt with, like so many shards of glass left on the floor.
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