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Need an interpretation for a quotation from 'Elia Kazan's The Arrangement' which is 'I was going to pull that big damp stone off from over him and let the light of day hit him.'

Here is the context which is rather slang:

The son of a bitch was a fraud, and I was going to pull that big damp stone off from over him and let the light of day hit him. He was able to live the way he lived for one reason only: his father had left him a bundle.

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It sounds like the implication is that the son of a bitch is a worm — as in an invertebrate which lives under rocks in damp soil because sunlight and dry air are too hot and dry for it.

The metaphor is that the SOB inherited a lot of money when his father died, and he's using it to protect himself from the consequences of his actions. The narrator is likening this money to a rock protecting a worm from the sun. If the narrator pulls off the rock (exposes the SOB somehow, by taking away his money, maybe?), then the "light of day" (public exposure) will hit the worm (the SOB) and make things hot and uncomfortable (expose him for being a fraud, disrupt his posh lifestyle).

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    Or possibly woodlouse, or some other beetle (many insects hide under stones from the sun too). +1 anyway, not that you need the validation :o)
    – Will Crawford
    Mar 14, 2018 at 3:46

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