The body
The novel presents the inciting incident as an encounter with death. Sue Ellen stumbles onto the dead body of not just any animal, but a human person. It isn't even "just anybody." It is her friend, May Lynn, who represented something to Sue. May is the one who left town to become a famous actress. That is, she decided to pursue her dreams. To find her dead during a routine trip to the Sabine River for fishing—that symbolizes the brutal horror of death, now finally realized in close quarters. The symbol signifies that Sue Ellen is entering adulthood, because the concrete experience of death is a part of adult consciousness.
Antigone's allusion
In a mark of artistic genius, the girl's father doesn't even recognize that his daughter might be having an emotional crisis. He is so used to death that he literally goes to toss the body back into the water. When Sue defends the corpse and demands a burial, there is a mythic allusion to the Greek tragedy Antigone where a daughter battles her father for the right to bury someone she loves. The fierce instinctual response is another indication that these moments are formative in Sue Ellen's consciousness. This is a proper bildungsroman.
The Hollywood ashes
By accepting the voluntary journey of restoring May Lynn's cremated ashes to the land she loved, namely Hollywood, Sue Ellen accepts a call to adventure. According to the rules of story-telling, this journey should net her some gain. The ashes are a symbol of life's meaninglessness and the cruelty of death. Her decision to accept May Lynn's death as a call to adventure is therefore the equal and opposite symbol. She pursues meaning knowing the full weight of life's emptiness and brutality. She literally carries a talisman of death, her own friends dead ashes.
Terry the isolated boy
An important symbolic tangent is shown in Terry's family. Terry's mother does a bad thing by marrying into a group of homophobes. Now Terry's identity is a constant crisis. But that isolation is only half of the equation. In the same way Sue carries May Lynn's ashes, Terry carries his familial rejection (something many gay people experience). Just as Sue redeems death by living adventurously, so too Terry redeems his beautiful personality from the clutches of shame by enjoying community with his friends. By choosing to be himself with them, he experiences healing and self-esteem.
The legend of Skunk
Rumor is that there are some people who go around murdering other people. They hear a legend about this guy, Skunk. Skunk's whole thing is that he gets involved with people by lending them money, and then when they can't pay him back as quickly as he wants, he plays the victim of their "theft" and executes them. This horrifying application of divine judgment (he plays God by taking a life) is a symbol for the darkness of human nature. When they learn that May Lynn was killed by Skunk in real life, the symbol becomes literal. Skunk's name refers to his disgusting nature. Sue Ellen realizes that it was not a suicide but a murder, and that discovery is the reward for her journey. Now she also understands human nature better as well, an addition to her character. By the way, this plot seems to be informed perhaps by Lynch's hit 1990's television show, Twin Peaks.
