5PM
The opening line situates the precise moment in time that the screaming upstairs starts. Not just 5:00, but 5:00 PM on the nose. The precision with which this is noted becomes a symbolic clue into the mindset of the mysterious narrator. It is indicative of the speaker’s desire to locate meaning in a random and terrifying universe. Timekeeping is an attempt to control and exert authority over something that actually has no real meaning since that exact moment in time that the screaming starts is 5 AM for hundreds of millions of others and 2 PM for others and, ultimately, a completely artificial illusion for everybody.
Elijah
Elijah is a figure from the Old Testament who is said to have ascended to heaven on a chariot of fire. The speaker imagines that the children’s screaming could have the power to cause the entire apartment building to lift off like a rocket into space headed for heaven. Elijah symbolizes the traditional view of heaven as being located somewhere within the infinite mysteries of the universal void.
Old Testament Robes
When the speaker is imagining the building lifting like a rocket toward heaven, the afterlife is imagined as either a door opening into the infinity of nothingness or as a place where all the dead appears in “Old Testament robes.” This particular image references how traditional religion-infused expectations of heaven have not changed over several millennia. Robed figures symbolize the lack slow evolution of religious concepts which still insist on seeing heaven the way it was originally imagined by writers of the Bible.
Furnace
Heaven is then imagined as being a place in which one is welcomed warmly like being greeted by a father one hasn’t seen in some time or, alternatively, as a place ready to “swallow us like a furnace.” This simile carries obviously connotations to the ancient portrayals of hellish damnation characterized by fire and brimstone. Situating a furnace as symbolizing an alternative version of heaven rather than its exact opposite is broadened by context to symbolize the utter mystery and unknowability of heaven.
