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Metaphor
Explanation and Analysis—Volcano:
In Chapter 9, just when everyone is celebrating Charlie's triumph of stealing peaches from Mad Jack Lionel's yard, they see smoke in the distance. The smoke, which Charlie describes with vivid imagery, is both real and a metaphor:
A pillar of smoke, dense and dark. A volcano is erupting. It is distant, but not too distant. It looks to be perilously close to the town center. And there is a moment where we all quietly take it in, that single column, climbing and writhing straight up. There isn’t a breath of wind. And we pay it due regard. This is a dark spirit with substance. Everyone in Corrigan knows there is something real here, that this is something to truly be afraid of, that this kind of smoke holds fire at its heart.
The smoke is startlingly "dense and dark," indicating not a little, controlled fire but a violent, destructive one. The "erupting volcano" is actually the Wisharts' house. Eliza has set it on fire in an attempt to kill or at least seriously injure her father. The sight of a house on fire at the center of town is enough on its own to snare the attention of all the onlookers. Still, Charlie suggests that they are transfixed partly because they see the fire as a sign of something more. The image of still air without "a breath of wind" blends the conservative town's stagnant cultural atmosphere into the physical atmosphere. The column of smoke stands in the middle of everything, unable to be dispelled. It helps everyone see that metaphorically, Corrigan is suffocating on stale air.
Just as the smoke is a sign of fire, the fire is a sign of the thing that created it: family secrets, sexual abuse, and Eliza's vengeful anger in the aftermath of her sister's death. In all this drama, there is even a hint of vengeful racism on Laura's part—did she think about the fact that she was setting Jasper up for her murder? All of this is the "something real here" that everyone knows instinctively they ought "to truly be afraid of." When Charlie arrives on the scene of the fire, the Wishart house is still burning but has not fully burned down. Pete Wishart is badly injured, but he is still alive. The entire town has organized itself around this abusive man, who seems as stubborn and steadfast as the immovable column of smoke. The town pays him "due regard" by keeping him as shire president, even though it may even be an open secret by now that he has abused his child. Charlie runs toward the fire while everyone is still standing by, watching. He seems determined to break with Corrigan tradition, refusing to watch in silence while something terrible unfolds.
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