Green Headlights
The story begins with the arrival of a car in the night illuminating its way with green headlights. The driver of that car will later inform the AI Junior that those headlights were his “signal” to activate. The specific color is the symbol in this case. Green headlights are not exactly normal. They are purposely strange. The green headlights activating an inhuman replication of a human being symbolizes the Otherness of the concept of artificial intelligence.
White T-shirt
Junior first saw his future wife, Hen, wearing a white T-shirt. She still owns it but so rarely wears it that he notices when she does. Even though it brings back warm memories, he actually prefers that she doesn’t wear it very often because each time she wears it requires it be tossed into the laundry afterward. Each laundering wears it out a little bit more. Junior does not want her to wear it out so much she gets rid of it. The T-shirt symbolizes how relationships inevitably change, become stained, and degrade over time.
Beetles
The beetles are a complex symbol, but they essentially come to represent the difference between humanity and artificial intelligence. For most of the book, Hen is disgusted by the beetles and Junior is not, even to the point of finding them fascinating. By the end of the book, these reactions are reversed. This reversal of reaction to the beetles coincides with the significant changes in the degree of humanity that take place between the two characters for most of the book and the two characters as they are at the end.
Quotation Marks
One unusual use of symbolism in this novel is the use of quotation marks. Without giving too much away, when the narrator, Junior, actually speaks conversationally through most of the book, his dialogue is not indicated with quotation marks. By the last few chapters, however, quotation marks are used to indicate his dialogue. This same alteration occurs with only one other character in the story except than the placement is reversed, with Hen’s dialogue indicated with quotation marks for most of the story and then disappearing in those last few chapters. The quotation marks eventually are revealed as another symbol delineating the difference between humanity and artificial intelligence.
The Barn
Junior and Hen live on a farm. He spends a lot of time in the barn because he has only the chickens for company, and they never ask questions or make demands. The story is set in the near-future characterized by many major technological advancements. The barn features chickens, grain, a bag, and a bin. The barn symbolizes pre-technological simplicity.
