The River
The river that runs past Warburton’s garden is deeply meaningful to him. He has even written into his will that he buried within the reach of the sound of the rushing water. That sound of the river is intimately connected to why it means so much to him and gains power as a symbol. The sound of the water below is conflated with the unseen voices coming from below who have come to him to ask for much more than a mere business manager. High up in his garden with the unseen Malays whispering from the darkness below, the sound of the river has come to symbolize his transformation from an exiled loser escaping gambling debts to an untitled Lord exercising his noble rights of peerage over the natives. The sound of the river is the sound of redemption.
Racial Slurs
The deeply unpleasant racial vocabulary ("n____rs") used in this story has become so loaded with a specificity of meaning in America that it has virtually lost most of its symbolic power. The judicious use of it in “The Outstation” suggests quite strongly that Maugham was presciently aware of the loaded potential its use carried. It appears just four times throughout the entire short story collection and three of those uses are found in this particular story. The reaction to Cooper’s use of it by Warburton is telling: that he immediately calls Cooper an ignorant man. This reaction indicates that Maugham had great insight into the word’s authority as a symbol and he engages precisely to illuminate Cooper’s ignorance. On a literal level, Cooper is so ignorant that he is not even aware the word is not merely a synonym for “dark-colored skin.” On a more expansive level, Cooper’s casual misuse of the term allows it to become a symbolic expression of Cooper’s far more expansive ignorance about so many other things, some of which will contribute to his being killed.
The Times
The newspaper to which Warburton subscribes and ritually reads in order of date despite containing news already almost two months old by the time they arrive is the story’s most potent symbol for the England that Warburton has left behind.
The Gramophone
The gramophone is endowed with great power as a symbol of the traditionalist ethos of Mr. Warburton coming into conflict with the anti-traditionalist radicalism of Mr. Cooper. That power is enhanced as a result of the gramophone playing such a significant role in determining the future course of events. But for ragtime music blaring from the gramophone, Mr. Cooper’s end by not have been so tragically violent.
The Outstation
The very title of the story is employed as an ironic symbol by the author. During the height of the British colonialist era, “outstation” was a term used to indicate exotic faraway locales where the British were conducting imperialist business. Implicit in the term is that to be “outstationed” is a temporary situation where one’s inherent British-ness must be maintained on the proposition that he will eventually return to the homeland. Or, in other words, anyone sent to an outstation post must be ever mindful to avoid “going native.” Quite clearly Warburton is going to extreme lengths to do just that even though he is never really going home again. His outstation status is permanent which makes him a symbol of the irreconcilable conflict inherent in the entire premise.
