The Woman Who Owned the Peacocks
The peacocks' fat woman owner symbolically represents people who do not care about God's creatures as long as they make a profit by sacrificing them. The narrator says that Zede realized that the peacocks are so beautiful, and they moan loudly when the fat woman scratches and tones and their feathers one by one. The author writes, "Little Zede had stood waiting as the fat, perspiring woman who owned the peacocks held them in ashen, scratched hands and tore out the beautiful feathers one by one. It was then that Zede began to understand the peacock’s mournful cry.”
The old woman who specialized in ‘found’ feathers
The old woman who specializes in the ‘found’ feathers represents humanity. Unlike the man and the fat woman who subject peacocks and parrots into pain, the old woman respects God’s creatures and only uses the ‘found’ feathers instead of painfully plucking them from the live birds. The author writes, “Zede then paid a visit to the old woman who specialized in ‘found feathers' and who was more flawed than the others but whose face was more peaceful."
The Papaya
The exploitation of the papaya plant symbolically represents the suffering of the communist people who serve as prisoners. When Zede is arrested because of being a communist, she is taken to prison, where prisoners were subjected to hard labor to grow papayas sold in foreign countries. Zede says, "It was a prison that did not, anyway, look like one. It looked like the confiscated Indian village in the backwoods of the country that it was. The Indians had been ‘removed,’ and all their rich if marginal land now was planted in papaya. It was to plant, care for, and exploit these trees for an export market that the prisoners were brought to the village.”
English language as a symbol of possibility
Zede and her daughter, Carlotta escape from prison to San Francisco, the land where people only speak English. At first, Zede and her daughter think they are out of place because of the language barrier. However, Carlotta learns how to speak English without an accent very fast. Zede struggles to learn and speak English, but at last, she can communicate even though with a broad Spanish accent. The author writes, "In a few years, Carlotta spoke English without an accent, a language her mother at first had difficulty understanding, even when Carlotta spoke it to her. Years later, Zede would speak it quite well, but with so thick an accent, she sounded as if she were still speaking Spanish." Therefore, despite how hard it is, Zede and her daughter finally can understand and communicate in English. Consequently, the author uses the English language symbolically to represent possibility in anything as long as one is determined and focused.
