How does violence come to take the place of love, expression, and creativity in Gods Go Begging? Make sure to quote the text and closely analyze the metaphors and symbols, the tone and/or feeling of each scene, demonstrating their connection to your claims and arguments.

In the first scene of the book, the two dead people cling to each other as if they are embracing. Véa writes: 

Pronounced dead on a cold city sidewalk, they held on to each other as the gurney rolled from cement to asphalt and into a waiting ambulance for a long, anonymous ride. In the end, it was clear to every onlooker that neither dying woman would ever let go of the other. (2)

When they are shot down on the street, the two women embrace as if it is an act of love. Their arms, fingers, and even stories have become entwined, and this deadly embrace is a symbol of the way in which death has replaced love. The dead women watch, detached, as their bodies are dissected in the coroner's office. They are thrown together into an embrace only when they are dead, and the movements of their dead bodies mimic the movements of love to show how death has replaced love in the world of the novel.
In addition, the lives of the personnel in the coroner's office have been marred and tainted by death. The assistant medical examiner tells his colleague that his wife is afraid that he has dissected so many women that "she thinks it'll make her body less special to [him]" (3). In other words, dealing with dead bodies and dissecting them have replaced touching his wife in an act of love. The chief medical examiner thinks that his "career would stalk him; it would take careful aim at his native curiosity, his romanticism, his passion" (27). Véa uses personification to make the medical examiner's career into a weapon that can stalk him. Dealing with death has killed the medical examiner's curiosity and the expression of his dreams, as it has for many of the characters in the novel, including the protagonist Jesse, who is forever haunted by the death and destruction he saw in Vietnam.