 The title of the novel is taken from the painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights", by Hieronymus Bosch.Richard Fusco of "America" magazine observed, 
"Instead of moving from Eden through earth to hell, as in the painting, Oates's protagonist travels from the hell of a migrant camp through an uncertain existence where joys are imagined, to an economic and social Eden, represented by Curt Revere's farm.But as was true in the painting, this garden cultivates the seeds of its own destruction."