The Perspective Box

In his prologue (which he calls a prelude), the author refers to a particular type of art called perspective boxes, in which an artist creates a detailed model of a building with rooms (like a home) and paints it so that it looks both realistic and three dimensional when viewed through a particular type of lens. Throughout the book, he uses language and imagery associated with this particular type of artwork as a metaphor for the process of memory, and of coming to understand the past.

Rooms and Hallways

Throughout the book, the author refers to particular events in memory as rooms, and the paths to get there as hallways. These metaphors are extensions of his metaphoric considerations of the perspective box.

Lenses

Again throughout the narrative, the author uses the word "lenses," and variations on the word and the concept, to describe ways of...