Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
When Bradley Pearson goes to the Baffin home in the early pages of "The Black Prince"and finds Rachel Baffin in a terrible state after having been "accidentally" knocked over the head with a poker, two intriguing examples of Christian imagery are part of the scene. Here's what Bradley has to say about it all:
I do not know why I thought then so promptly and prophetically of death. Perhaps it was because Rachel, half under the bedclothes, had covered her face with the sheet. (1.3.78)
She sighed very deeply and flopped her hand back onto the bed, lying now with both hands symmetrically by her side, palms upward, like a limp disentombed Christ figure, still bearing the marks of ill treatment. (1.3.90)
These passages are intriguing because the opening scene of violence at the Baffin home parallels the closing scene in which Bradley returns to the house to find another—and more deadly—scene of violence (in his version of events, anyway).
If Rachel Baffin seems like a victimized Christ figure in the opening scene, her performance as an avenging fury at the end of "The Black Prince" adds a touch of irony to her character arc, as her figurative "death" and "rebirth" as an unhappily married woman who turns into a seemingly noble and grieving widow represents a far less lofty form of transformative rebirth than the one that Bradley himself experiences at the end of his "ordeal."