The Green Road
The green road is a cart track paved with rocks that commences from the middle of a bog, zig-zags this way and that with no seeming plan and turns back upon itself so that it heads toward no particular destination. Its seeming pointlessness at first makes it a symbol of Irish uselessness for Lib and of Lib’s anti-Irish prejudice for the reader. Later, she finds out that it was built without seeming purpose because the British occupiers of Ireland considered Christian charity to be un-Christian, and therefore starting Irish people were invited to work a pittance wage for the Public Works department. The only way to justify making them work instead of giving them charitable assistance was to build a road that went from nowhere. Those who happened to die during the effort had the road built over them. And so the green road ultimately becomes a symbol of British oppression.
Saints
Lib notices that all the Catholic nuns she comes across have taken the name of saints. Since all the Catholic saints—or almost all, anyway—were men, this means that the nuns go male names. For Lib, this situates the saints as a symbol of patriarchy and misogyny within the Catholic church as it seems to be a requirement that nuns sacrifice their very womanhood and femininity to earn themselves even the lowest position within the church hierarchy.
The Photo of Pat
There is a photograph of the family which especially bothers Lib. It is the only sign of the mysterious missing son, Pat, and he is curiously positioned, and his appearance is just slightly off somehow. It turns out that the photograph was taken shortly after his death, which was a tradition at the time. She finds out that the whites and pupils of his eyes were painted onto his closed lids. When the boy’s mother, Rosaleen, satisfactorily acknowledges that the eyes “tricked her entirely” and thus the additional expense was the cost, Lib’s misreading of the boy’s mortal condition becomes another symbol of the British sense of superiority to Irish glee at one-upping them.
Manna
Manna is mentioned in two books of the Old Testament, Exodus, and Numbers. Basically, it was a foodstuff provided directly from God to the Israelites for the forty years they spent wandering in the wilderness after escaping bondage in Egypt. Manna has since become a metaphor used to describe any miraculous good fortune that defies explanation. In the book, however, Anna speaks of manna literally even as others are using it metaphorically. The biblical story of manna becomes a symbol of superstitious belief engendered by religious faith for Lib, especially when it inspires her to figure out the secret to how Anna has been getting food.
Holy Cards
Holy cards are decorated with ribbons or lace or something similar, featuring a pastel drawing of a particular saint and a prayer. They are Anna’s most treasured possessions, but Lib views them as fairly creepy stuff for a kid to have as well as more evidence of the danger of putting too much faith into things unseen and unproven. In the end, she ignites a fire using one of the cards featuring “some saint she didn’t know.” This act becomes the crucible of her final, ultimately a rejection of superstition and unfounded faith.
