The narrator Zimmerman takes pains to draw parallels among Jesus, Drake Jones, Nightface, and himself.

He is most explicitly drawn to the portrait of Nightface on a collectible card; Nightface, depicted as watching a person far away, is perched on a precariously tilting rock; he has a face that expands into the night. Zimmerman is also an observer, a watcher of people, his existence balanced on a precarious rock while his parents try to push him off, and in the end the people around him seem to be drawing his life from him, as if he were expanding into them the way Nightface expands into the sky.

Zimmerman views Jesus and Drake Jones as versions of himself, relating his personal experiences to theirs. This is self-centered of him, but he is a smart person who has stimulating ideas about how Jesus and the artist...