The Tomkeys
The Tomkeys are a neighboring family that the author almost becomes obsessed with for just one reasons: they do not even own a television. This singular differentiation is expanded upon so that it invests every aspect of their lives with unique position relative to normalcy. A family that itself obsessed with televised entertainment thus becomes a symbol of what marks middle-class suburban rebellion against the mainstream.
Brandi
It is difficult to locate exactly what nine-year-old Brandi is supposed symbolize. But she is certainly intended to symbolize something. The little girl whom the author is nice to and for that becomes the recipient of vile treatment is instantly recognized for what she is by his mother, but this hardly helps clarify the situation. She may simply symbolize the fact that just being a kid doesn’t inherently make you innocent. Or perhaps Brandi is intended to symbolize the hardened child that every one of us might be if raised under such unpleasant circumstances. Ultimately, it seems Brandi is what might be called a free agent symbol: she represents whatever reach reader makes of her.
“The End of the Affair”
The film adaptation of the Graham Greene novel directed by Neil Jordan and starring Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes as an impossibly beautiful couple in an impossibly romantic love story is situated as the symbol of exactly why love stories are the worst possible genre for a long-time couple to watch. Incredibly romantic movies showing passionate relationships inevitably lead to such a couple wondering silent—if not asking out loud—why their own relationship isn’t like that. Which is, of course, a road most couples are not prepared to travel down.
A Netherland Christmas
A good chunk of one chapter is devoted to the author learning all about the strange intricacies of a traditional Netherlands Christmas celebration. Too extensive and bizarre to lay out here, suffice to say that it resembles nothing like the convention view of a traditional Christmas in America. The story, despite being tinged with horrific racist overtones, serves to become a symbol of the relative conservatism of American culture as the Netherland celebration comes across as extremely eccentric by comparison.
The Boy and the Elevator
The story of the author’s absolutely normal interaction with a young boy in a hotel elevator becomes for no real reason almost a horror story simply by virtue of the precise circumstances at work. The author is a gay man and for this reason and none other he is overcome with a sense of fear and dread that a series of events that were he heterosexual would fail to raise an eyebrow may, in fact, conspire to potentially destroy his life. The story acts a symbolic nightmare of what it means to be homosexual: to be suspected of also, inherently, of being a pedophile.
