The Screen (Symbol)
The screen is a looming presence in the silo; it dominates common spaces, like the cafeteria, an ever-present reminder of the consequences of human actions on the environment. Initially, the screen represents hopelessness, as it confirms that no human being can survive outside the silo. Still, it symbolizes the lure of the beyond, as even the most contented silo citizens gather around the screen to take in its “view,” growing anxious and “stir crazy” when the image becomes blurred.
However, after Allison plants the seeds of doubt in Holston’s mind, the screen represents distorted reality and deceit. Holston fixates on the screen’s dead pixels, feeling that each one that dies does not limit his view but rather serves as a “tiny window,” providing a “clear view through an illusion he had grown to doubt.”
Children's Books (Symbol)
Only children’s books survived the silo’s most recent uprising, as all others were destroyed, presumably to control the population’s knowledge about the outside world. The children’s books, illustrated with creatures too fantastical to be real, discourage people from wondering about what life was like before the apocalypse. Intentionally confusing artifacts, the children’s books symbolize the silo’s intentional distortion of history and creation of a compelling illusion.
To Holston, however, the picture books symbolize unadulterated truth and a sense of curiosity innate to every human being. He feels the picture books are “truer” than the image on the screen because they are a tangible holdover from the past and created with joy and imagination, as contrasted with the pragmatic, industrial silo.
The Hill (Symbol)
A hill dominates the view presented on the screen. Holston and Allison fixate on the hill, which represents the lure of the beyond. They believe that the “truth” exists just beyond the hill and agree to meet there if the surface world is survivable. Thus, climbing the hill symbolizes the pursuit of truth; Allison and Holston hope to literally go over the hill together by climbing it and figuratively “go over it together” by uncovering the silo’s secrets. However, Allison and Holston both die climbing the hill. They “go over it together” in a third, evening more fully symbolic, way—in death, having successfully uncovered the grim truth.
