Dulcimer
Dulcimer the doll is a symbol related to growing up, breaking with the past and moving. The doll’s name connects him to the past of children, but eventually that connection is broken and even reaches the point where Thomas denies knowing where the doll is and even why he named her Dulcimer.
The Foreigners in Number Nine
The string of foreigners who are constantly shifting in and out of 9 Waverley Street are the novel’s symbolic representative of the capacity to not only endure life, but enjoy it. The foreigners come and go, listening to music and watching Rita Hayworth movies and seeming to Ian as if they lived their life like characters in a movie without any real care for the long term.
Dice
The dice used to play Parcheesi recur later connected to the darkness and strangeness of Agatha’s dream. As with so many objects in the novel, the use of dice to mark passage through a game and the later dream-symbolism linking them to a black cat and his flinging them into her face situate dice as metaphors for the random quality of fate which permeates the text.
Furniture-Building
Ian’s apprenticeship with the cabinetmaker results in his building furniture with a singular devotion to constructing only those things with straight lines. Ian is a right-angle kind of guy—Rita even describes his face as “all straight lines.” His is an obsession with order, symmetry and predictability and his furniture-building skills is the central symbol of this obsession.
The Cradle
The cradle that Ian builds as the novel draws to a close represents Ian’s ultimate victory over obsession to impose order on a world defined by the randomness of dice. For the first time, he builds a piece of furniture with curves, eschewing his compulsion for straight lines and right angles in doing so recognizing and accepting that that such geometry is preciously rare in life.
