What metaphors are used in The Tiger's Wife: A Novel by Tea Obreht?

In Chapter Ten, the idea of a crossroads serving as an important place of transition manifests itself in several ways - among them, as a goal for Natalia in her quest to know more about her grandfather's death and about the Deathless Man, and as a key component of the Deathless Man's identity and his explanation of that identity to Natalia's grandfather. The concept also manifests in a more metaphorical way in the grandfather's essential situation; both he and the town he is visiting (Sarobor) are at a crossroads, a point at which their journeys turn off in a different direction. In many cultures, death is a similar point of turning, a similar point of transition from one stage of a journey to another.