The Brothers Hawthorne

“The name stuck to Jameson, emblazoned on his brain, beckoning him like a sign declaring that no one was allowed past.”

The author uses the simile of ‘a sign declaring that no one was allowed past’ to show how the club, the Devil’s Mercy, immediately becomes an obsession for Jameson. The author creates the image of a large, bright sign as a comparison of the way Jameson’s curiosity and ambition draw him to problems or dangers to keep him invested and interested. The image of a bright, dangerous sign is like the image of a bug drawn toward the light of a bug zapper. Likewise, Jameson’s attention is best captured by things that may hurt him.

“Grayson’s hand found its way to his pocket, to the medallion inside. ‘When words are real enough, when they’re the exact right words, when what you’re saying matters, when it’s beautiful and perfect and true—it hurts.’”

The medallion Grayson carves with his haiku is a symbol of Grayson’s perfectionism as cultivated by his grandfather. In this quote, his grandfather connects beauty, truth, and pain. Grayson carries this narrative with him to adulthood, and it drives his belief that anything good in his life is bound to disappear if he makes a mistake.

“His. There was emphasis on that word, like the Factotum was as much larger-in-life to his errand boy as Tobias Hawthorne had been to his grandsons. If the Factotum demands that kind of response…exactly how powerful is the Proprietor?”

The author characterizes the Factotum through Jameson’s comparison to his grandfather, ultimately communicating the Proprietor’s power and foreshadowing the strategy Jameson will use to try to impress him. This