How does Robertson Davies use imagery in Fifth Business?

Imagery:

How could I reconcile this motherliness with the screeching fury who had pursued me around the kitchen with a whip, flogging me until she was gorged with—what? Vengeance?…What I knew then was that nobody—not even my mother—was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself on the surface.

To me a boy is a green apple who I expect to expose to the sun of history until he becomes a red apple, a man.