What metaphors are used in Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley?

While humor permeates Crimes of the Heart, it is often a hysterical humor, as in the scene where Meg is informed of her grandfather's impending death. Just as Lou Thompson has observed in the Southern Quarterly that the characters eat compulsively throughout the play, a "predominant metaphor for... pathological withdrawal," so the laughter in the play is equally compulsive, more often an expression of pain than true happiness.