Comfort Food
Jessie and Mama use sweets to placate themselves and to seek out comfort. Jessie has made plans to give herself a good final evening and part of those plans includes a cup of hot cocoa and a caramel apple with her mother. Mama jumps right into this new activity of making sweets for her daughter. She believes that this homemade dessert shared between mother and daughter will help soothe some of the tension.
When Jessie is preparing details to take care of her mother once she is dead, she orders Mama enough snowballs to last her weeks, she refills the sugar jar and the honey jar. Jessie wants to give her mother as much help as she can, including helping her deal with the death by securing her sources of comfort.
The Manicure Tray
The manicure tray that Jessie and Mama both handle during the course of the play is symbolic of the intended normalcy of the evening. The schedule on any other Saturday night should have been Jessie giving Mama her manicure. That is how the evening would have gone, except Jessie has chosen this particular Saturday night to commit suicide. The manicure tray represents a normal evening, without change and without conflict. Both Mama and Jessie continue to go back to it, — craving some stability in their argument and something to hold onto — but they never actually use it… just as the evening can never go back to normal after the knowledge of Jessie’s plans.
The Old Towels
Jessie asks Mama for old towels that she doesn’t want anymore in her preparation to commit suicide. Taking the time to ask Mama for useless towels is symbolic of how little Jessie wants to disrupt Mama’s life with her death. Jessie isn’t committing suicide as a way to get back at her mother or prove anything to anybody. She doesn’t want her suicide to be a big mess. Her little everyday considerations made for Mama are symbolic of how separate Jessie feels from her mother. She behaves in a way that uses her life as a way to serve her mother. She wants to be as little hassle to her as possible. She doesn’t even want to use towels that her mother will miss when cleaning up after her death.
Daddy's Gun
Jessie's wanting to use her father’s gun as the method of killing herself is subtly symbolic of her deeper connection with her father. She wants him to be with her in her last moments, in any way that she can. She took comfort in him during her childhood and loved to talk with him. It would make sense that she would want to take some of that good memory and familial bond with her when she dies. She gets to spend a final night with her mother and she gets to connect with her father again by using his shotgun to shoot herself.
Jessie's Fits
The fits themselves become symbolic in Jessie's life as another thing that happens to her that she has no control over. When she is overcome with a fit, she collapses and her body behaves without her conscious brain controlling it. She loses track of time. There are minutes, hours, and days of her life that she will never be able to recall. Life is going on without her and even if she wanted to keep up with life, she doesn't always have the choice. Her body works against her and causes her pain. The occurrence of her fits further solidifies the theme of Jessie seeking out suicide as a way to have control over her own choices. Not only does Jessie not feel control over the world around her, but her own body is behaving without her say. She cannot trust her own body to protect her or behave to her benefit. The fits further symbolize Jessie feeling out of touch with her life and her decisions.
