Symbol of death
In A’s apartment, there was a leafless potted plant. The potted plant is a symbol of death. This is because it symbolized the dead man that was lying on the apartment floor who had been left there by unknown persons to frame A of the murder.
Allegory of how difficult it would be to prove his innocence
A realized that it would be difficult for him to prove that he was innocent. The narrator used the following allegory to describe the difficulty, “The geometric proposition that parallel lines never converge is patently true, yet impossible to prove, while its converse-that any two straight lines will inevitably cross can be easily demonstrated.” Just as it was not easy to prove the theory that parallel lines would never meet, similarly proving A’s innocence would be difficult.
Allegory of the problem that A was in
The narrator uses an allegory to describe the trouble that A was in. The allegory is, “Like a man in the grip of a snake with its tail in its mouth, he had fallen into an insoluble quandary. There was nothing to do but strike out at random and chop the snake into two.” The situation is likened to a man who has been attacked by a snake. The situation that A was in was similar because it was unexpected and that the outcomes could be very damaging for him because he could go to prison for a crime that he did not commit.
Turning on the lights as a symbol
Turning on lights in a house is a symbol that the owner of the home has arrived from work or from a trip that they had taken. A was torn between turning on the lights because then his alibi that he was at work or out of the home would be destroyed and not turning them on and sitting in the dark with the corpse that he found in his room.
Motif of suffering
There is a motif of suffering in the story. The corpse must have died a very gruesome and painful death and it was dumped in an apartment. A suffered because he feared that he would be incriminated in a crime that he did not commit. The people who lived in the apartment block suffered loneliness because they lived in solitude.
