Setting as Metaphor

Los Angeles becomes a metaphor for the clash between expectation and reality in the story. On their way home from a party, Charles and Dulcie drive through Santa Monica with its “nice houses. Pretty flowers. Volvos” before they pass the Hollywood boulevards where scantily dressed teenagers club hop while others wait to sell their bodies in back alleys and in cars. Couples like them move to Los Angeles in the hope that they can find the beautiful landscapes and happy endings they see in film, but most newcomers learn they must settle for the shabby, rat-infested apartments and dangerous sections such as South Central where one dares not venture alone. Dulcie and Charles cannot afford to live in Santa Monica; they must struggle instead to cope with their limited and ordinary lives, which for them includes the death of a child and a carjacking...