The Mill's Machinery
The machinery which the mill workers must tend are described in imagery that situates the working conditions a hell on earth. The aspect of damnation connects the machines as symbols of the enslavement of the Industrial Revolution. Because of the limited skill set required to do mill work, opportunities for either advancement or alternative job choices are so severely limited that the workers are effectively securing themselves a dependence for life upon those low-wage jobs. The machinery of the mill becomes, then, a symbol of their own hellish bondage to the job.
The Korl Statue
The statue made by Hugh is twice described as wolfish. Its creator answers the query of what his art is supposed to mean by saying she’s hungry which is immediately misunderstood by the questioner incapable of fully understanding the nuance of the art. When the obvious connection is made that the statue with a face “like that of a starving wolf’s” was created by a man named Wolfe, the symbolism become readily apparent: it represents the hunger of every artist unrecognized and unfulfilled.
Smoke
The second paragraph of the story features the word “smoke” on five different occasions and consists of little more than references to the pervasive quality of smoke throughout the entire town. The narrator even goes so far as to identify this pervasive quality as the town’s singular “idiosyncrasy.” The symbolism is related to that idiosyncrasy; while only a minority of the population actually labor inside the mills producing the smoke, everyone in town is somehow affected by it. This is true regardless of location or economic status. And yet, those of a higher economic status feel comfortably alienated from the dirty business and horrific life of those workers despite their possession being equally stained with the stench.
"Deb's" Hunched Back
Deborah is notably depicted as a “hunchback” but the implication is not that she was born with this deformity, but rather that it is the result of her own labor as a “picker in the cotton-mills.” Also notable is that in addition to this physical reduction in stature, the narrator usually refers to her by her full name, but in dialogue she is more often called just “Deb.” Taken together, the physical and metaphorical deformation of Deborah is highly symbolic of the toll mill work takes upon women workers.
Money
Almost from the moment Mitchell contemptuously dismisses cries out “Money has spoken!” the very word “money” begins to take on an almost totem-like power. At one point, it almost seems like neither Hugh nor Deb can speak two sentences without saying the word. Money takes on the role of becoming the story’s saddest symbol of all: it—and not Hugh’s artistic talents and abilities—is the key to his enjoying a better life.
