Phone Calls (symbol and motif)
Throughout his meetings with Carol, John regularly answers phone calls from various figures in his personal life, especially his wife. He tends to act harried and frustrated on the phone, as if he is in a rush to get off the line, speaking in fragmented sentences, cutting off the person on the other line and being cut off himself. These phone conversations punctuate an otherwise fluid, conversational series of events, but they serve another purpose as well— the phone symbolizes the ties between John's office and the world outside it. The phone calls remind us that John's time and attention are torn between these two realms, and that what happens in one can affect the other. For instance, being fired from his job will have a great effect on his family's financial comfort. At the same time, the phone symbolizes the even deeper ways in which the office is connected to the outside world, in the sense that the conflict between John and Carol echoes a massive culture war taking place all over the country. The phone is the one concrete link between the claustrophobic atmosphere inside the office and the teeming, complex world outside his door.
Letter to Tenure Committee (symbol)
The complaint that Carol writes to the tenure committee becomes a symbol, during Act II especially, of the limitations of the concept of objectivity. When Carol visits John at his request, she repeatedly turns the conversation away from their differing feelings and towards the details that she has reported in the complaint. These details are objectively accurate, and even John cannot deny that every event reported in the letter took place. However, the fact that John and Carol agree about what objectively occurred in his office brings them no closer to an understanding. Carol maintains that these events were against the rules and even the law, while John sees them only as good-natured attempts to teach a struggling student. Therefore, the text within the letter takes on various meanings, completely dependent on the worldview of the person reading.
Pilot (allegory)
During their first conversation, in act one, John uses the allegory of a pilot flying a plane to reassure (or, depending on one's reading) threaten Carol. He describes a pilot whose attention momentarily drifts from the task at hand. The pilot is so distressed to find that his mind has wandered that he berates himself, getting so distracted that he crashes his plane. Together, cutting each other off and finishing each other's sentences, Carol and John assure each other that the pilot needn't have caved under pressure, and might simply have forgiven himself and righted the plane's course. John intends to use this allegory to illustrate that Carol needn't panic and fail his class—rather, she can recognize her previous errors, calmly correct them, and move on. However, one can also interpret this as an allegorical representation of the larger conflict between John and Carol. Like the pilot in the story, John learns that he has made an error and then becomes so upset that he worsens his own situation. Rather than simply recognize Carol's complaint and correct course, John repeatedly invites Carol back to his office, making himself even more upset, and then attacks her. Though he intends to use the allegory to educate Carol, it also seems that he might benefit from absorbing the same lesson himself.
House (symbol)
The house that John wants so desperately to buy symbolizes the perfect, upwardly mobile life to which he aspires. While being tenured represents a similar achievement to him, there are two important differences between these two symbols. For one, a house is a physical object, easy for audiences to picture and relate to, while tenure is a vague concept used primarily in the academic world. Furthermore, the house is relevant not only to John’s career but to his personal life as well. Therefore, his eventual failure to buy the home symbolizes his loss of control over every aspect of his life.
Carol's Notes (symbol)
During their first conversation in John’s office, Carol refers to a notebook containing her notes from John’s classes. She even tries to take notes on the things John tells her during their meeting. John is dismayed, and urges her to focus on their conversation rather than taking written notes. The notes, then, symbolize Carol’s attachment to a more traditional learning method which John dislikes. Given Carol’s later statements concerning John, the notes also symbolize her desire to steer the conversation in a more comfortable direction, in which she maintains some control.
