The iPhone
The cell phone which the narrator buys for the title character is obviously the central symbol of the story. This is a story of contradictions. Mr. Harrigan is a billionaire who made some of his fortune in the high-tech telecom sector yet doesn’t own a television or computer. He is a nice old man and a ruthless businessman. The story is about an old guy who learns to text and a young kid who decides to go total landline in the future. The iPhone symbolizes this duality existing throughout the story. It is both a tool used to forge a close kinship between generations and a medium for ending life prematurely.
Scratch-Off Lottery Cards
Four times a year Mr. Harrigan sends a card to Craig which contains a Maine lottery scratch-off card. For the fours this has been going on, a $5 winning ticket was considered by Craig to be a big payout. And then on Valentine’s Day 2008, he finally hits it really big with a $3,000 winner. The consequences of the blind purchase of that lottery card will prove to forever change the course of Craig’s life, mostly for the positive. As the story progresses, other characters will prove to become victims of that card. The lottery scratch-off cards thus become symbols of the extent to every life is shaped by an unknown fate toward an uncertain destiny.
Film and Literature
The overarching theme of the story deals with the concept of eternal life. It questions whether it is possible and, if so, whether it is a good thing. In his will leaving a trust fund to Craig, Harrigan describes films as “ephemeral” and suggests that books may not have eternal life, but they come close. Books become symbols of the possibility of eternal life because they require active engagement rather whereas watching movies is an act off passivity. As the story plays out from that moment, this suggestion that eternal life requires effort will be further explored.
Kenny Yanko’s Hair
Kenny Yanko is a bully who targets Craig from day one and eventually does beat him up. This is the event which causes the entire story to take a trip into typical Stephen King territory. Craig calls the iPhone that is buried in the grave with Mr. Harrigan and leaves a message about the incident and how much he misses Harrigan. The next day Yanko winds dead as a result of a mysterious suicide that spurs endless theories and rumors. The most unique thing about the kid’s death, however, is that half the hair on his head had turned white. This detail becomes the symbolic identification that the death was not a suicide by any of the proposed or official means, but somehow the result of intervention by the dead man.
Scrooge and Marley
When he is discussing Thoreau’s quote about how things we own always wind up owning us, Harrigan makes an allusion to Marley’s ghost explaining how he wears the chains he forged his life as a constant reminder of how he came to be possessed by his own greed. This moment proves to foreshadow the coming turn in the plot when Harrigan dies and Craig starts to call him after traumatic moments causing a desire for revenge. Harrigan becomes the symbolic Marley to Craig’s symbolic incarnation of Scrooge as he takes on the role of the ghost from the afterlife trying to send a message to Craig to change his ways before he becomes consumed.
