“The Circus in the Attic”
Everybody has a circus in the attic in somewhere. Maybe not an actual attic or an actual circus. But someplace they can go—even if inside their own head in a room full of people—where that is a sanctuary from the life you never wanted.
The Patented Gate
“The Patented Gate and the Mean Hamburger” seems a curiously idiosyncratic title for a story; the kind of title chosen merely for its eccentricity as a way to draw the eye of a prospective reader. And, indeed, it fulfils that purpose admirably. But the two distinct and seemingly unrelated items in the title turn both turn out to be complex symbols. The addition of a gate to Jeff York’s family farm which has existed up to its installation without a such a device is laden with symbolic meanings associated with ideological politics of private ownership, agricultural modernization, and identity. All of these issues will come up for analysis in relationship to the other half of the title.
The Mean Hamburger
The mean hamburger is not associated with Jeff York, but rather with his wife who is quite notably never mentioned by her first name. Her identity is Mrs. York with the associated suggestion that she is part of Jeff’s identity and her own is less important. She only begins to acquire her own separate identity with the revelation that that she is the person who “flings a mean hamburger.” Ultimately, she coerce Jeff into buying the diner—symbolic of her acquisition of identity--with the result that he hangs himself from his gate—symbolic of his loss of identity.
Phil Alburt
“The Unvexed Isles” is a rather vexing story. Not a whole lot happens and what which does ultimately winds up going nowhere. Arguably, the single most interesting thing about the whole story is its closing line, or—more specifically—the final 42 of the final sentence’s 199 words:
“…Phil Alburt, who had, really, nothing to do with them, with George Dalrymple and Alice Bogan Dalrymple, would ride away, forever, on horseback, his naked face smiling as he rode down the white beaches beside the blue water of the unvexed isles.”
It is here that Phil Alburt finally emerges as the whole point of the story in his role as the symbolic incarnation of both dreams imagined in youth and dreams denied in recollection.
The Tramp
The tramp is the only identifying moniker by which an important character in “Blackberry Winter” is known except for stranger. The symbolism begins with the fact that it is a misleading moniker. Everything about this stranger is a little off the track for the stereotypical tramp: khaki pants instead of jeans, wool coat instead of overalls, grey fedora instead of a straw hat. To wit: malevolence exudes from the stranger, but so does an exciting sense of chaos. His role in the story will serve to make him, for many readers, a figure who is less a mere symbol than an archetype: the Trickster.
