Sunlight (Symbol)
The speaker’s memories of her home country remain tinged with sunlight despite the darkness of war and tyranny. Sunlight is warm, indicating the speaker’s love for her country, and it also creates the capacity to see, since human sight requires light. In this case, sight refers not just to vision but also to the speaker’s understanding of the world and her place it in. The child’s vocabulary that the speaker carried with her tastes of sunlight, and this “opens and spills a whole grammar,” or rules of language and communication. Overall, sunlight is inherently connected to the speaker’s memory of her country: in her mind’s eye, she sees, tastes, and stands in her country’s light.
Paper (Symbol)
Overall in the poem, paper suggests both power and fragility in different contexts. The first time paper is mentioned is when the speaker describes her original view of her country as a “bright, filled paperweight.” A paperweight is an object used to weigh down papers and keep them organized. In this way, it is made clear that the speaker’s original view of her country keeps her centered, even if she experiences sadness in recollecting her country. No news about the country, no matter how terrible, can break the speaker’s original view.
The second time that paper is referenced in the poem is when the speaker states that she has no passport. A small booklet has the power to allow for or prevent movement in the world, showing the pain and conflict inflicted by human-created borders. In this case, the speaker is cut off from her country of birth due to not having the necessary papers.
When the speaker imagines her country as a personified being, the country is “docile as paper.” Docile means being quiet and easy to influence, persuade, or control. This demonstrates that despite the speaker’s strong and clear memory of her country, the country itself is fragile and able to be manipulated.
The Speaker's Shadow (Symbol)
Towards the end of the poem, an unidentified group surrounds the speaker and accuses her of absence and darkness. When the speaker’s personified city hides behind her, the speaker’s shadow falls as evidence of sunlight. In other words, the shadow, while itself dark, pays testament to the existence of sunlight. In this way, the speaker’s shadow symbolizes both her own darkness (her guilt and anger) that causes her to imagine this threatening incident, as well as her connection to her city. Throughout the poem, the speaker’s connection to her place of origin is defined by sunlight, and so the speaker’s shadow becomes evidence of this connection.
