Dreams as a symbol for the unseen
Dreams are a bridge between the realm of the known conscious world and the unknown subconscious world. This symbol occurs most obviously in "I Sell My Dreams," where dreams are connected to a mysterious women who interprets dreams and then dies randomly. The question is asked but not answered: Do the dreams really mean anything, or was it random?
The motif of coincidence
The amount of times a character sees an old friend or an old acquaintance in this collection is obviously significant. In "The Airplane," a man falls in love with a woman who ends up sitting next to him. "The Saint" narrator meets Duarte randomly, years after the main action of the story. "I Sell My Dreams," shows the strange encounter between a man and a now-deceased woman he'd known years ago in Austria of all places. That man goes on to accidentally meet the great Pablo Neruda. The implication is that coincidence is not necessarily meaningless or random, because it seems to matter so much in these particular instances.
"The Ghosts of August" as an allegory
A family vacationing to a haunted castle finds that their time might have taken a bad turn when they wake up in a different room than they went to sleep in—the room where the murder took place in the ghost story, and what's worse, there is fresh blood in their bed. This can be seen as an allegory for those who misunderstand the past as seperate from the present, as a thing to be entertained by, but not to learn from. The indication is that the past matters, and we never really escape history.
"Tramontana" as an symbolic story
The image of a family huddled in a shelter, up against the extreme forces of nature, is a symbol for life. It indicates the value of working together and the value of being with loved ones when the storms of life occur.
"The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow" as an allegory of powerlessness
By interpreting Billy and Nena's terrifying story as an allegory for love, the reader sees that although Billy was mistreated, it wasn't the hospital staff who killed his wife—it was nature. He misunderstands this and forms a vengeful attitude toward the people involved, but in reality, the story indicates what every couple goes through. Every lover on the earth has to watch their partner suffer unfairly in life, because everyone suffers tragedy and death. Therefore, Billy and Nena's story is allegorical for the brutal discovery that there is nothing you can do to save your loved ones from suffering or from death.
