Riverton Manor
The manor is a special kind of imagery. The building like a tangible depiction of the steadiness of time. The story features Grace the elderly woman and Grace the child, but the house is the same. That means that Riverton has more powerful implications than just the setting. As a form of imagery, the Riverton estate illustrates the way humans live in groups. She is a lone survivor of a group that endured a fateful, tragic death, and now she has to tell her story or the world may never know it.
Memory and time
The story is told in retrospect, so the filter of memory is on the story like a lens. Through the lens, we see the way the story stayed with Grace through time, through her whole life. Now she is almost a hundred years old, and she sees that unless she tells the truth, she will die and the truth about Robbie Hunter will be lost forever, and only the lie will survive. She decides to share her experience, reaching back into her mind to summon the memories that she has long hidden from the world.
Panic and trauma
Robbie is not exactly the beacon of happiness. He fought in WWI and has come back with a severe case of untreated PTSD. When Emmeline busts in with a gun, he panics and treats her the way he would have treated her on the battlefield. He tries to kill her and the gun goes off and he dies. Notice that he was already panicked by the fireworks. Loud, concussive sounds send him into panic that no one else can understand. The depiction of panic and trauma is shared in the wake of his death by those who were affected by his death.
Love and tragedy
Without their need for love and union, there would have been no tragedy. As it stands, the truth of the matter is that Robbie Hunter did not commit suicide but was murdered on accident when Hannah and Emmeline fought over him. This is a depiction of love as a crisis, and a competition at that. The tragedy comes when they kill the very thing they want most, the love of Robbie. Their accidental murder of him is also a symbol for the mistreatment they caused by not understanding the damage he had sustained from battling in WWI.
