Miss O'Shea
Henry marries an older woman—an aggressively sexual older woman—he calls Miss O’Shea. He continues to call her Miss O’Shea even after the marriage. This recurrence becomes imagery that comments upon Henry’s loss of his mother as an authority figure early in life. The non-conventional gender arrangement of the dominant/submissive roles is reflective of her being his superior on so many levels, but also becomes a demonstration of her inability to grow beyond that role.
Grammy Nash
The relationship with women that most boys develop was really not even a question for young Henry. It is not just the mother he never really knew, but the vision he develops of her mother—his grandmother. As his relationship with his wife—Miss O’Shea reveals, childhood trauma tends to follow into adulthood:
“She’d become a witch by the time I saw her. Always with her head in a book, looking for spells. She shoved her face forward with ancient certainty, knew every thought behind my eyes. She knew how far evil could drop.”
Wooden Leg
The wooden leg of Henry’s father that eventually gets passed along to him is a symbol that recurs throughout the narrative. It is the various uses of the leg that gets both men in and out of trouble that coalesces these individual scenes into imagery. The imagery relates the loss of the actual leg and the necessity of the artificial replacement to the idea that both men have lost something substantial and strive to find artificial replacements to fill the gap.
Stars
The opening scene of the novel features Henry’s mother looking up to the sky, pointing to a star and calling it her “little Henry.” Throughout the rest of the narrative, imagery will reveal Henry looking to stars and sometimes he will yell out to the sky “I am Henry Smart!” The sky and the star’s place within become imagery that symbolic creates a motif reuniting Henry with the woman whose absence from his childhood continues to dominate his psyche.
