How does John Edgar Wideman use imagery in The Beginning of Homewood?

Around the middle of "The Beginning of Homewood," the narrator writes his own version of a piece of his brother's story, the scene at the courthouse in Fort Collins, Colorado. The imagery in this account provides links to the other stories, inviting comparisons. For example, details such as the hallway that "some other black prisoner mopped" and the "drag of the iron" that binds their legs suggest the slavery and bondage of the narrator's brother's ancestors. The narrator's brother and accomplice pretend no awareness of the chains that cage them at the courthouse, creating around themselves a "glass cage," in which they perform for the onlookers, and asserting their spiritual independence from the physical chains that bind them. This "glass cage" is part of a pattern of cage imagery that links many of the stories, and how these characters respond to the cages is a good point of contrast.