Fat Men
The symbolic significance of the title the story which also serves as the title of the entire collection is conveyed quite simply and effective in one sentence found quite early in the narrative:
“in the years before the revolution most fat men were either Americans, stooges for the Americans, or wealthy supporters of the Americans.”
Karl Marx personified (so to speak) the consumptive quality of capitalisms through the metaphor of the vampire capitalist sucking the life blood of the exploited worker. Carey approaches the symbolic potential from somewhere closer to the Thorstein Veblen spectrum of consumer capitalism by situating his metaphor within the realm of those who feast upon the work of others and grow fat at the expense of the poverty and hunger of the masses.
The Hairless, Eyeless White-Painted Doll
The younger woman whom performs many domestic duties for the older male narrator of “Peeling” has a curious obsession with collecting dolls which she promptly scalps, gouges out the eyes, removes all teeth paints white. The dolls are most assuredly a symbol, of course, and it isn’t too much of a spoiler to suggest that they symbolize to various degrees concepts like dominance and colonialism. To just what effect the dolls symbolize such concepts is a joy to be experienced by reading rather than reading about.
The Model Town
The scale-model reproduction down of a small town and the people in it which Mr. Gleason spends five years crafting in secrecy behind a giant wall enclosure as his plan to deal with the entropy of retirement becomes famous enough to serve as a tourist attraction bringing American dollars into the community. But as time goes on and the town changes, the tourist aren’t exactly happy with the differentiation. Perhaps inevitably, they collective view the simulacrum as reality and the reality as a disappointing simulation. The symbolism here should be speak for itself. Possibly in the voice of a high squeaky mouse wearing gloves.
The Mime
The story is called “The Last Days of a Famous Mime” and he attains a genuinely high level of celebrity as a result of a particularly unique talent for a person working within his limited discipline: he can convey a sense of terror through pantomime so comprehensively that audiences literally run from their seats. They always return, of course, but all stars eventually burn out and the seed of the supernova here is a single criticism from a reviewer who rhetorically asks what possible purpose could be served by invoking such a reaction in an audience. That criticism marks the precipitous fall of the famous mime as he struggles to answer the critique by changing his act. The symbolism is linked to the final act of the mime: his literal public suicide to conjoin with the metaphorical suicide of not remaining true to his vision.
The Borderline
“A Windmill in the West” is a tale about a single soldier assigned to guard a borderline in which in everything to the west belong to the U.S. and everything to the east belongs to Australia. Obviously, this is impossible logically speaking, so the borderline is metaphorical. It is intended to be one of the many symbols of colonialism and imperialism which populates Carey’s entire body of work. The reference is not about traditional colonial imperialism, however, but rather specific incidents in which a section of a country’s sovereignty is handed over to U.S. military bases. The soldier slowly approaches madness as he loses the ability to determine spatial recognition of which is east and which is west; which is America and which is Australia.
