Granny Weatherall's Lamp
Much is made of the light in Granny’s room being shining blue as a result Cornelia’s lampshade. Outside the light gets blue just before it goes dark and such is the case here. The final sentence of the story make it clear metaphorical weight the lamp carries: “She stretched herself with a deep breath and blew out the light.” The lamp—or, more precisely, the light—is mortality. Granny is ready to go into the darkness.
The Purse
The purse in “Theft” is a metaphor for its unnamed owner’s relationships with the rest of the world. The reader is introduced to three men and one woman with whom she is connected and each of those connections are transactional. They are all based on the exchange (or non-exchange of currency), but most importantly as a symbolic object, the purse is empty. Her desperation has nothing to do with the money, it is what the purse represents, but she comes to understand that the purse represents the empty life she has allowed others to give her.
That Tree
The tree in “That Tree” is described very, very early in the story twice as a place to lie beneath and writing poetry. The main character never gets to that tree because he is a hack. A fraud. A poseur. But that hardly changes the nature of the metaphor. Just because you can’t get to what you’re going doesn’t mean that it’s not there. And the tree is a metaphor for everybody’s ideal spot in the world where they are doing what they love. Or, more accurately, doing what they think they are going to love.
Honey
Maria Rosa’s honey, to be precise. For Maria Concepcion’s husband, honey is the bouquet of temptation that draws him to Maria Rosa. The beekeeper is sweet and sensuous and everything his wife is not. But she is not his wife. The honey that is associated with Maria Rosa becomes the metaphor that ensures her doom. That sweetness is temptation; always a bad thing in stories constructed on Catholic dogma.
A Regular Monkey
Mrs. Whipple is moved to think to herself her unnamed but always capitalized son “He” takes off “skittering along the branches” when climbing trees that he is “like a monkey, just a regular monkey.” It may well be the one single moment in the story that that reveals herself most starkly and truthfully. As always, of course, she does not reveal herself to anyone else. But since her problem stems from self-delusion it is as close as she likely ever gets. And even the comparison of her troubling son to a monkey probably gives him too much credit. A monkey skittering on a tree, after all, is entertaining at least.
