"The Golden Age" home
The Golden Age Children's Polio Convalescent Home is described as an "island", as it is located on the intersection of four roads. The home's physical location emphasizes the isolation of its inhabitants, disconnected from healthy society by the disabilities the children have developed from contracting polio. Frank Gold describes feeling "like a pirate landing on an an island of little maimed animals. A great wave had swept them up and dumped them here. all of them, like him, stranded, wanting to go home." This illustrates the abandonment and lack of social connection experienced by the children who live here.
Nature
Characters are often described in relation to animals or other elements of nature.
Ida Gold, Frank's mother, is "a bird who refused to sing".
When Elsa wakes alone at night, her mind is "dry and clear as if a sea wind had just swept through it."
Nature is crucial as a kind of liminal space where characters can meet and build or restore friendships. Elsa and Frank strengthen their friendship and youthful romance on a trip to the beach, Meyer Gold and Sister Penny reconnect on the street after Sister Penny has been swimming in the ocean, and Sister Penny's only consistent relationship is with an ex-soldier who lives on a farm in the countryside. Elsa's mother believes the garden "[tells] her things", and when Elsa falls ill with polio, Margaret interprets a crow in the sky as "the spirit of cruel Nature sending her a message".
Like life, Nature is shown to be isolating, demanding, and sometimes cruel, but also incredibly beautiful.
The Third Country
"The Third Country" is the name of a poem Frank writes and also the title of the chapter in which Frank and Elsa's relationship becomes physical. The language of displacement from one's own country, transitioning into a new country, and struggling to find a place to belong is pervasive throughout the novel. For Frank, "the third country" is an emotional, relational and physical landscape embodied by his relationship with Elsa. Both characters experience a sense of belonging when they are together that transcends geographical and national boundaries. In "the third country", Frank is able to exist within an identity that is not based on his heritage as a Hungarian-Australian migrant or a polio survivor but as a poet.
Light
Light-related imagery is used to represent hope, purpose and even life itself. For the characters who are parents, their invalid children become their "light", or reason for living. Both Frank and Elsa reject the burden of carrying all their parents' hopes and dreams for the future, with Frank saying, "I refuse to be their only light. I want to be my own reason for living."
The Netting Factory across the road from the Golden Age home keeps its lights on all night. For the children, these lights in the darkness come to represent that "brightness" is possible for their future, even as polio survivors. It also symbolizes how their own survival offers hope to others with polio that life is possible: "No one will ever die here".
