Smoke- “Old Habits”
The smoke signifies the insubstantiality of ghosts. The narrator intimates, “But we still won’t be able to touch (Black). If we try, it’ll be like two drifts of smoke melting into and through each other. That may be the true tragedy of being a ghost.” Corporeal contact is unachievable among the ghosts because they are deficient of somatic bodies. The ghosts’ configuration is comparable to smoldering.
Virus- “Old Habits”
The virus epitomizes the ghosts’ impassive senses. Black Anchor deliberates, “Maybe we just caught some kind of virus that messed up all our senses. Maybe we’re all lying in hospital beds somewhere, and some grumpy cunt of a doctor with a busted leg is yelling at his team that they have to find a cure.” The virus is blamable for the ghosts’ incapacity to view, perceive, smell, feel and palate the world. The virus cements the ghosthood.
Clock and Bells- “Old Habits”
The clock signifies continuing life. One can be either on the clock or ‘off the clock.’ The narrator recalls, “The canned music chirps at me to listen to the sleigh bells ringing. I’m off the clock. I let the escalator carry me down to the main floor.” Being ‘off the clock’ suggests that the narrator’s living has been terminated. The resounding bells indicate the culmination of the narrator’s life.
Glass, Steel door and Blackness- “Old Habits”
The narrator perceives, “I stand in front of the glass and steel door. I stare at the blackness on the other side of it. I think about pushing against the crash bar; how solid it would feel under my palm; how the glass door would feel slightly chilly against my shoulder as I shoved it open.” The steel door embodies the split-up between the material life and the ghostlike life. The glass signifies the insubstantiality of existence, once the glass disrupts a person moves from the bodily world to the ghostly world. The darkness characterizes the vagueness of the life beyond the Ghost life; there exists an additional life that the ghosts are unconscious of. Once one has transmuted into a ghost, he/she mislays perception regarding the going-ons in the worldly life.
Storm- “The Glass Bottle Trick”
In the exposition of “The Glass Bottle Trick” Hopkinson writes, “The air was full of storms, but they refused to break.” The storm signifies Beatrice’s outrageous commotion that will unravel after the crush of the two bottles. After the splintering of the bottles, Samuel arrives and moves “ around in the house, the angry rumbling of his voice like the thunder before the storm.” The storm presents clues about distress that is about to supervene in the household due to the rupturing of Samuel’s bottles.
Two Bottles- “The Glass Bottle Trick”
The two bottles epitomize profound secrecy. Samuel own up to the bizarre bottles when he concedes, “Is just my superstitiousness, darling…You never heard the old people say that if someone dies, you must put a bottle in a tree to hold their spirit, otherwise it will come back as a duppy and haunt you?” Samuel’s concession authorizes that he is a mysterious, credulous man. The two bottles are a security him that his wives’ spirits will not haunt him; even though he does not disclose it to Beatrice, for he is liable for their demises. Later on, the bottles divulge Samuel’s intensely fortified mysteries regarding the deaths of his two wives. The splintering of the bottles represents the exposure of the secrets.
