Mother
The symbols in such a short story (not even 550 words) do not contain much power individually, but instead gain their meaning by working together as motif. That motif serves to underscore a key thing to know about the character of Mitchell: he finds domesticity unbearable. More than unbearable; it is oppressive. That oppression is most keenly symbolized by the imagery conveyed in the admission that his mother holding so tightly onto his hand felt “three mortal hours” or, put another way, three full lifetimes.
The Father
Mitchell says of his father that he “thought the old cove was gone off his chump” because he’d been sitting in a chair in the kitchen crying to himself. The phrase is Aussie slang for describing someone who acts like he’s lost his mind. Perhaps the time frame just didn’t permit Lawson the freedom to describe what Mitchell thinks his father has really lost, even in symbolic terms. A man alone in a chair weeping over the return a very much living son—even one he temporarily believed to be dead—contributes to the motif of the oppressive quality of domesticity in a very specific way: the cost of masculinity. It isn’t his mind that Mitchell really thinks his father has lost; the crying old man is a symbol of emasculation.
The Old Sweetheart
It is not just family that is emotionally overcome by Mitchell’s return home after eight years. Proof that he is not a hard man lacking sentiment is revealed by his being touched at the realization that after eight years his old sweetheart still has feelings for him. And yet, she will likely forever remain an old sweetheart. He didn’t marry her before leaving home eight years earlier and he is not so moved as to change his mind when he returned. Thus, she becomes another symbol of how domestic life and its attendant responsibilities is something he finds stifling rather than comforting.
The Mulga Shade Tree
In the present in which Mitchell is recollecting his story, he enjoys the cool comfort supplied by the shade of the mulga tree which stands on the edge of “the wide, hot, shadeless cotton-bush plain.” The last respite he will enjoy from that heat as he and his mate prepare to set off across the plain takes on meaning as a symbol of the comfort of domesticity. While enjoyable for the short-term, such a locale is no place to settle down.
The Plain
The plain may be hot and offer little shade for comfort, but it is also wide. So wide that it is almost impossible to stay trapped in any one place for long. If the domesticity and comfort of the home and life as son and husband and father is viewed as a metaphorical prison for Mitchell, the more prison-like discomfort of the brutal heat and wild unpredictability of the plain represents adventure. The edge of the plain, despite all its comfort and security, is no place to live. Life is not for living on the edge of adventure.
Water-Bag, Pipe, and Hat
In between the first few paragraphs describing the hysterical reactions of those back home to his return, the narrator tells us what Mitchell is doing in the present in short, terse one-line breaks from the dialogue. He’s got his water-bag, his pipe and tobacco and a hat he uses as a water bowl. Placed in juxtaposition to what Mitchell views as an emasculating reaction by those domesticated back home, these simple tools become the symbol of freedom. They are all a man like Mitchell needs to find comfort and security anywhere on earth.
