God and religion
Through motif, this memoir reflects on a child's opinion of God. The religious beliefs of Craig's parents are already hardened and formed by the time Craig arrives in the home. He is just a child, unable to understand what life is even like to adult humans, and he implicitly trusts his parents, but when their religion goes against his natural desire he arrives at the crisis of his ego. This book shows him accepting a taste of the forbidden fruit, symbolized in a way every child of a religious home will understand: the camp romance affair—a religious camp at that.
The one who got away
As our femme fatale we have a potentially real, potentially invented name: Raina. Now, Raina is fairly close to "Reina" which is Spanish for princess, which would be an invocation of royalty. Raina probably also means princess, but "Reina" also reminds the reader of Reina Valera, the famous Spanish Bible. Anyway, this princess of Craig's was first and foremost a friend. They met at church camp, which is kind of like meeting during holy time or "holiday." When they reunite, they have sex and become one, but the religious shame and complication of their romance at such a young age makes Raina leave. She is officially his "one that got away."
The blanket
As a souvenir for both their time together at camp and their time in bed, Craig keeps Raina's blanket, a gift she had given him before their relationship ended. Other than that, he destroys everything else which makes this blanket an eligible candidate for symbolic interpretation. Even if this detail is perfectly factual, it can still be seen as a natural symbol for Oedipal feelings of warmth, protection, and safety. The attachment to a blanket invokes juvenile associations to further the point that Craig left her in the past and moved on. He leaves the house as a sign of this.
The transition to experience
What is the purpose of this memoir? It is to capture the author's sense of bildungsroman. He is writing the book from the perspective of an accomplished adult, a fully blossomed human person, one should think. Now, he reflects through art on his own emotional remembrance of transitioning into the realm of adult experience. First he detaches himself from the religious strictures of his parents to discover the tantric and tragic bliss of sexual ecstasy. Then, he encounters life's brutal and dominating narrative, the "heaviness of human fate," and when he heals from his first love, he is a fully grown adult. The story is his "coming of age."
The return to home
As if to more perfectly establish himself as the hero, this author-character offers us a portrait of his return home, after leaving his parents home—not for the religious reason of procreation or "being fruitful" as the Bible would say—but to heal from the damage of a repressive religious upbringing and the extreme sexual attachments he forms because of this. His return home is a promise to the reader that, although we do not get to know everything about that journey toward healing, he does accomplish it in the fullness of time. The return of the hero is the final stage of the hero's journey.
