What metaphors are used in Fever by John Edgar Wideman?

The city is a key metaphor in the story, compared both physically and figuratively with the people who have been left in it during the yellow fever outbreak. It is wasted and dying, its streets the veins and arteries that distribute the poison. The poison—prejudice, poverty, hopelessness and isolation—manifests itself in a devastating fever that enslaves everyone, both black and white. While this epidemic runs its course, everyone is a slave —and everyone is equal.