The Grandmother’s Death
The story opens with the death of the protagonist’s grandmother. This is the stimulating event which drives the narrative toward its coming-of-age story. Within the specific context of the publication history of this novel as one of the first positive representations of homosexual coming-out, this event carries powerful symbolic status. These types of stories at the time tended to be dependent upon a tragic event involving loved ones being a necessary psychological component.
Broken Home
Another contextually important motif is the broken family. The protagonist was living with his grandmother in the first place because the marriage of his father and mother and broken up. The situation has not improved and, if anything, has only gotten worse. This is also a necessary component in the homosexual coming-out stories of the time where even in positive treatments of the subject homosexuals simply weren’t thought to ever issue forth from happy homes.
Private Schools
Upon moving to the city in the aftermath of his grandmother’s demise, the teenage protagonist enrolls in a private school. Private schools are almost mandated by law to be the domain where homosexual activity is initiated. This symbolic status traces to British boarding schools and crossing the Atlantic forced the substation of private schools since America does share the British history of boarding young male students as a matter of course for upper classes.
Black Jellybeans
Altschuler doesn’t like black jellybeans. When he goes to the candy store, the owner knows this about him and makes the effort to keep a distance between him and the black jellybeans. The owner describes this act to the protagonist simply as “that’s business.” It is symbolic of the fundamental rule of success in business: know what customers want and give it to them.
Davy Altschuler
The same-sex object of the protagonist’s romantic interest is David Altschuler. Most of the adults call him Davy. The narrator generally refers to him by his last name. Davy is a symbolic devaluation of his male potency; it is a young child’s nickname. Altschuler, by contrast, derives is symbolic status by virtue of not being Miller or Johnson or Jones. Altschuler is vaguely exotic and foreign and thus the perfect name for alienating him as a homosexual love object.
