Moth Smoke

“My cell is full of shadows. Hanging naked from a wire in the hall outside, a bulb casts light cut by rusted bars into thin strips that snake along the concrete floor and up the back wall. People like stains dissolve into the grayness.”

The reader later learns that the prisoner here is Daru, the protagonist of the novel. The image is one of chiaroscuro, the contrast of light and dark, which serves as a metaphorical representation of Daru himself: He is both good and bad, morally speaking. The final image, a simile, foreshadows the moths that Daru will kill in his candlelit apartment as the people in his life slowly disappear.

“He killed as a serpent kills that which it does not intend to eat: he killed out of indifference. He killed because his nature is to kill, because the death of a child has no meaning for him.”

The prosecutor is presenting opening arguments against Daru in the sham trial that is underway throughout the book. His simile—Daru is like a snake—functions to dehumanize Daru, thus making it easier for the judge to find him guilty. There is also irony here because Daru does, in fact, daydream about killing Mumtaz’s child, Muazzam, in order to have her all to himself, later in the novel.

“At our age, my hirsute chum, all women care about is cash. And my bank account is hairy enough for a harem.”

Daru’s best friend, Ozi, is speaking here, bragging about his wealth and implicitly goading Daru to feel ashamed about his own relative lack of privilege. It is the first indication of the long-lived underlying tension between the two. It is also ironic that Ozi describes his wealth as “hairy,” which will later be what Daru nicknames his heroin-laced hashish: Each signifies the moral lapse of the men: Ozi’s corrupt money and Daru’s drug addiction.