The Crippled Moth
The moth which the author’s teacher cripples by putting into a jar too small for its wings to develop properly is one a series of entities which symbolize the increasing desire to learn and seek enlightenment within the world of books. The subject of the memoir itself is the development of the interior life of the mind and the crippling of the moth is a symbolic incarnation of the crippling of a mind left closed. From that point, the author’s knowledge of moths expands; crippled by ignorance no more.
Awakening
Becoming “awake” is literally referenced several times and the collective effect is to situate the concept of awakening as the author’s symbol of reaching a new stage of consciousness of the world around her. She is awakened when she learns the joy of reading and learning new information. She is further awakened by exposure to literature. Then still more when moving and learning about the actual world outside of her books. Wakening symbolizes awareness.
Jonas Salk
The author expresses amazement and admiration that the cure for polio was discovered in her own hometown. Jonas Salk conducted his experiments at his research lab at the Univ. of Pittsburgh and with the signed consent of parents tested his wildly controversial vaccines on the city’s schoolchildren, including the author herself. It is essential to understand that during the author’s generation was the first that was able to grow up without the constant fear of contracting the virus. But Salk does not come to symbolize hope or progress or the miraculous, but rather the idea that through hard work and dedication, change is possible.
Andrew Carnegie
Carnegie is the symbolic incarnation of the compositional structure of the book. As a memoir, it is naturally a look backward from the perspective of an adult, but at time she author enters into the past and changes verb tense and point of view from first to second person. This makes the move more immediately and allows the reader to see the past through the eyes of the young girl. Carnegie is most representative of this dual perspective. She can see only the wonderful qualities of the philanthropic side as a girl: the free access to museums and libraries built on the back of Carnegie’s wealth. As she grows older, however, she comes to appreciate the flip side of Carnegie: his brutal demands upon the working class and the hard live and poverty of Pittsburgh which flew beneath her childish radar.
Sherlock Holmes
Upon discovering the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, the author devotes herself to the art of observation as Holmes does. What she discovers, however, is that her gift for observation is not in the manner of deductive reasoning, but is rather pointed in the direction of nostalgic awareness of imagery. Holmes the detective thus becomes a symbol not of reasoning, but rather observation; not of logic, but of emotional resonance.
