Wine
References to wine proliferate the narrative and almost within a different context every time. For instance, there is the reference to the prohibition of alcohol in the transitional housing apartment building the author temporarily calls home. There is the dreamy fantasy of sipping wine under a canopy while grilling shrimp on the barbecue while cleaning a fancy house. And there is the splurge on a bottle wine after getting a robust tax refund. Altogether, the recurrence of wine as something out of touch during economic struggles situates it as a symbol of normal life for yet another woman for whom normal everyday life is constituted in part according to necessary access to fermented grape juice.
Diamond Ring
That tax refund also allows for a much bigger and singular splurge: a $200 diamond ring. The purchase begins—at least in terms of intent—a symbol of marrying herself to independence. The text specifically indicates that having become tired of waiting for a husband to make that deeply symbolic purchase and that absence turns the inherent symbolism on its head.
Match.com
Although the author expends great vigor and energy—and rightfully so—engaging the issue of food stamps and those who view the purchase of certain items using them with moral outrage and fiduciary disdain, the really hard-hitting symbol of how those depending upon government assistance should not be entrusted with the right to determine how they spend that money is the famous dating website. Factually speaking, the author does not specifically spend any government assistance on the monthly subscription, but instead uses part of the $100 check her father sends her as belated birthday present.
This expenditure would likely not raise the eyebrows of so many reader reviews online were it not for the fact that right before diving into her dating experience she admits to the deciding “to do something reckless with the money” rather than paying bills or buying necessities. Such an attitude opens the door wide open for attacks against social programs based on how the money is spend and becomes a dark symbol of that aspect of political thought regardless of the fact that it was birthday money she used.
House Cleaning
The job that the author has for most of the book is such a perfect symbol it almost seems as if it could not be a true. She is employed by a maid service to do deep-cleaning of homes for—obviously—people with enough money to afford such an extravagance. This makes her story a symbolic portrait of the American economy in miniature. The vast majority of employment opportunities for low-wage workers in America involves catering not to the necessities of wealthier classes—if the author can find the time and energy to clean her own house afterwards, why can’t these people—but to services which are utterly dependent upon their being an endless pool of workers lacking either the education, skill, or—most importantly=the contacts to get a better paying job which is not dependent upon vast amounts of disposal income in the hands of others.
Ariel
If a movie adaptation of this book was made by the Coen Brothers, it would most likely open with the car accident that occurs about two-thirds of the way through and then tell most of the story through flashback. The accident is extremely traumatic for a number of reasons with the most symbolically significant being that it all starts with a little Ariel the Little Mermaid bath toy bought for five bucks at Walmart. In the bleak, godless world of the Coen Brothers where no supreme being is looking out for anyone, fate is nothing but the uncaring roll of the dice or flip of a coin. The decision to fork over that five dollars in that Walmart for that toy on that night proves to be a sequence of events that only just barely manages to avoid being as darkly Coen-esque as ironic symbolism gets.
