Motif and Symbol: Anna's Makeup
Anna confides in the narrator that David gets angry when she doesn't wear makeup, which she faithfully applies every morning before he sees her. When the group spends the night in the wilderness, she forgets it and despairs that David will be mad at her. And when she is pushed into the lake, she emerges with her "pink face... dissolving" (137), not only referencing tears but also her facade of perfection and fakeness melting away. As makeup is traditionally seen as a symbol of artifice and superficiality, these scenes add credence to the narrator's conviction that Anna is not a real woman—she is a "seamed and folded imitation of a magazine picture that is itself an imitation of a woman who is also an imitation" (169).
Symbol: Golden Phoenix
One of the stories the narrator is illustrating is that of the Golden Phoenix. A golden phoenix is a mythical bird who dies by bursting into flame and then is reborn from the ashes. This is a potent symbol for the narrator, who, through water not fire, is also reborn.
Motif: Disease
The novel begins with an evocation of disease—something is sweeping through the white birches and leaving them for dead; we learn her mother died of disease; and the Americans are like "a virus" in her opinion, getting into the brain and messing everything up. One of the manifestations of the sickness is the change to the rural village, such as the new road.
Symbol: The Heron
The heron symbolizes nature, innocence, and purity; thus, its violent, senseless killing and its killers' egregiously distasteful display of its body symbolize the violation of nature, the destruction of innocence, and the besmirching of pureness. The heron is akin to Christ and other sacrificial creatures; the narrator herself notes this, believing that "anything that suffers and dies instead of us is Christ" (141).
Symbol: Water and Diving
Water is a powerful and timeless symbol of birth and rebirth, purification, life and fertility. Thus, the narrator's submersion in the lake when she dives in its depths looking for the rock paintings brings about a cleansing of her false memories and a rebirth of her self; in the aftermath of the dive she is ready to face her parents and herself in a way she was unable to prior.
