The Ostriches
The story “A Deal in Ostriches” involves a small group of ostriches, one of which has supposedly swallowed a valuable diamond. Nobody knows which ostrich is responsible, but everybody knows the value has been assessed at somewhere between three and four thousand British pounds. Inevitably, an auction is arranged by greedy buyers willing to gamble on a one-in-four shot that includes a sure jackpot for the winner. Or does it? Ambiguous information presented at the conclusion of the story suggests with a fairly high degree of certainty that the ostriches symbolize the gambling truism that there is no such thing as a sure thing by hinting that none of the ostriches had a diamond payoff sitting in its stomach.
Azuma-zi
Azuma-zi is one of two main characters in the story “The Lord of the Dynamos” and what is especially fascinating about the story is that the other main character is explicitly identified as a brutish racist given to acts of violence in pursuit of his prejudicial character. What makes this so interesting is that Azuma-zi is a black man described using language that even at the time would have been identified as explicitly racist by any reader with the slightest sense of racial understanding. Though the other character is designed to represent racism, ironically it becomes Azuma-zi who is the symbol of the stage of upper-class British prejudice toward minorities at the time.
“The Stolen Bacillus”
One might well think that this story is chock full of symbolism related to the future means of war known as bioterrorism and to a point that assumption would be right. But it is not really the meat of the narrative—the seeming theft of a cholera sample and the mad chase through the city to retrieve it before London becomes a giant petri dish. The symbolism lies not in the climax, but the denouement and even more specifically in one single sentence in the denouement: “You see, that man came to my house to see me, and he is an Anarchist, No—don’t faint, or I cannot possibly you tell the rest.” The Professor and Mary Ann of his tale is that it was never cholera all along and the city was never in any danger. The entire melodrama of the story leading to the denouement is intended to symbolize the irrational fear of Anarchist violence which was then at a fever pitch throughout England, Canada and the U.S.
Aepyornis vastus
The title of the story in which this fictional extinct bird becomes a symbol kind of gives the game away: "Æpyornis Island.” Despite the protagonist subsisting on the island with the bird as a castaway for a couple of years, the small atoll comes to share the bird’s Latin name as its own. That bird which begins the story already extinct begins life as an egg and after hatches becomes the man’s delightful companion until it grows big enough and strong enough to contest a battle for dominance of the island. Thus the bird comes to symbolize what at the time was inconceivable for most people: the possibility of extinction for the human species or, worse, total subjugation to a more dominant species.
“The Diamond Maker”
This story is presented as a cautionary tale. The title character spends much of his life dedicated to working out the mystery of how to manufacture diamonds. Because his ultimate goal is profit, he has done this work in a life of poverty: monetarily, emotionally, and spiritually. This alienation leads to the twist of his experiments being misconstrued as the work of an anarchist loner building bombs at the point of success so now that he actually can make diamonds he cannot sell without fear of facing suspicion of anarchism and the natural assumption that he is lying about his diamonds. The man becomes a symbol of the irony of rejecting a full life for the potentially fruitless gamble of becoming rich. Or, alternatively: the man-made diamonds are symbols of the scam of the actual diamond business which defies the rules of supply and demand by virtue of the fact that the price of diamonds continues to rise even as millions more infiltrate the market every year.
