Hair [symbol]
All over the novel, the author uses 'hair' to epitomize beauty and gorgeousness. Characters such as Dana and her mother have long, beautiful hair, which is very attractive. On the other hand, Ronalda is not proud of herself because she does not have long hair. When her schoolteacher asks Dana to draw her family, she pulls beautiful hairs on her head and that of her mother. While drawing the picture, Dana writes, "Near the left margin, I drew my mother and me standing by ourselves. With a marker, I blacked in my mother's long hair and curving lashes. On my face, I drew only a pair of wide eyes. Above, a warm sun at all six of us."
A blade (Symbol)
The blade is figuratively used in the novel to represent dissatisfaction. James buys his first wife a curved blade knife, which he gives Gwen to wrap. She immediately suspects that something is wrong. James is probably looking for satisfaction and companionship from Gwen. The narrator writes, "In 1968, she was working as the gift-wrap counter at Davison’s downtown when my father asked her to wrap the carving knife, he had bought his wife for their wedding anniversary. Mother said she knew that something wasn’t right between a man and a woman when the gift was a blade.”
The symbol of Chaurisse and Laverne
Chaurisse and her mother represent people in a marriage who think they lead a perfect life, but the opposite is true. Chaurisse knows that she is the only daughter of James. Similarly, Laverne believes that she is the only wife, and she boasts about her husband's faithfulness when she is at the salon and her friends. Satirically, there is another wife and daughter behind their scenes. The narrator writes, "My mother knew about Laverne, but Laverne was under the impression that hers was an ordinary life. We never lost track of that fundamental fact."
The Narrator’s Art Picture (Symbol)
The narrator's school portrait emblems the reality of life and the stress children go true as they try to understand the environment around them. Dana is James's daughter, who has another daughter, with who he spends most of the time, but James does not want to talk about it. When asked to draw a family picture, Dana starts with James, Laverne, and Chaurisse but draws her mother and hers at the paper's margin. Dana feels that her mother and her and outcasts in James' life, who the first wife and daughter. When asked to draw family pictures by the teacher, the narrator says, “While all the other children scribbled with their crayons of soft-leaded pencils, I used a blue-ink pen and drew James, Chaurisse, and Laverne.”
Dana (Symbol)
Dana is an innocent child who represents secrecy in extra-marital affairs. James does not like the first wife and daughter to know that he has a second wife and daughter. Laverne thinks that James is a faithful husband, and she brags about it. When conversing with Dana, James tells her that she is the secret and that anything in that house is surreptitious. While chatting with her father, he says, "You are the secret… What goes on in this house between your mother and me is grown people's business."
