The Starved Rabbits (Symbol)
In Part 1, when Mrs. Curren shows Vercueil around her yard in the hope that he might work for her, he lifts a log and uncovers rabbit skeletons. Curren goes on to explain:
They used to belong to my domestic's son. I let him keep them here as pets. Then there was some commotion or other in his life. He forgot about them and they starved to death. I was in hospital and didn't know about it. I was terribly upset when I came back and found out what agony had been going on unheeded at the bottom of the garden. Creatures that can't even talk, that can't even cry. (20)
The rabbits are a source of irony, ironizing Curren's lifelong neglect of and ignorance of her position within apartheid. The rabbits symbolize those oppressed by apartheid policies, robbed of their voice and robbed of representation while liberal-identifying whites like Curren stood by and let it happen.
Sleeping Under the Stars (Allegory)
Curren tells a story about when her mother was a young girl camping by the Piesang River, and as she was lying under the stars, she thought she saw the wheels of the wagon moving with her family inside. She was racked with uncertainty as to what to do about it. She wasn't sure if she actually saw the wheels turning, or if it was just the sky, and she didn't want to needlessly wake everyone up. As she fretted over what to do, she fell asleep. The next morning, she awoke, and the wagon was right where it was when she fell asleep. The story is an allegory for inaction, which Curren inherits from her mother, and Curren's daughter inherits from her. One can hear the echoes of Curren's mother's tale in Guguletu, when Mr. Thabane asks Curren, "When you see a crime being committed in front of your eyes, what do you say? Do you say, 'I have seen enough, I didn't come to see sights, I want to go home?'" (98).
Grubs (Motif)
In Part 1 of Age of Iron, Coetzee establishes grubs and larvae as a metaphor for whiteness, ignorance, and historical innocence. Curren refers to white children and her own whiteness throughout the novel (7, 64, 92) in these terms; "grubs," she says, "plump and white, drenched in honey, absorbing sweetness through their soft skins. Slumbrous their souls, bliss-filled, abstracted" (7). Grubs are inert; they don't act, they don't have agency. They simply take and absorb from their surroundings.
The Hillman (Symbol)
Curren's old green Hillman sedan gives her trouble throughout the novel. At one point Vercueil diagnoses it as needing a new battery. At another point, Thabane suggests there's something wrong with the alternator. Whenever someone tells her there's something wrong with the car, she assures them that she already knows, and she's letting it fall into disrepair. The car symbolizes Curren's own degradation as the cancer destroys her body. The car's gradual state of disrepair parallels Curren's medical decline.
The Floaties (Symbol)
In Part 4, Curren pores over a photograph of her grandsons swimming in a lake in the U.S. They're wearing life vests and floatation wings on their arms, and Curren writes to her daughter, "perhaps it dispirits me that your children will never drown" (195). The floatation gear is a symbol of the children's sheltered lives. They are another manifestation of Curren's metaphorical bee grubs.
