The Sandpiper
The home of the family is referred to as “The Sandpiper.” There can be no question whatever that this was an idea that came from the mother who is obsessed with Elizabeth Taylor. The name derives from a movie Taylor starred in while at the height of her fame in the 1960’s. It therefore works as a symbol of the extent to which the mother has become assimilated into buying the phony realities behind the illusions of the American dream.
Marilyn Monroe
Upon seeing he has dyed his hair blonde, the young man’s mother asks, “Robert Redford blond?” His reply will be scornfully repeated later by his mother as an exasperated admission of a truth she does not want to have to admit. That his dye job is intended to reflect not Hollywood male heterosexual sex symbol Redford, but the very iconic symbol of female sex symbols makes his hair color a symbolic open admission of his own homosexuality.
The Wonderland Mall
The Wonderland mall designed by the architect father is a dualistic symbol. On the one hand, it represents the pinnacle of success as the symbolic zenith of a career rise from designing strip malls. But in his own mind, it a symbol of failure based on falling way short of the dreams of his youth.
Malls
As part of the play’s social critique of American consumer capitalism and its debilitating effects upon the family dynamic, shopping malls become the symbol of the symbolic epicenter of devastation. From his fortunate spot at the starting gate of the mall revolution in America, the architect as a younger man describes them to his future wife in language formerly reserved for the non-consumer spaces: “future town squares” where people come together to socialize and where “you’ll feel right at home.”
The Collapse
Everything changes for the family after the Wonderland mall collapses as a result of cutting costs. The collapse kills and buries sixteen people in the rubble. A monologue by the father desperately asserting that he does not ever even think about the sixteen people “I killed” reveals the truth: he is haunted by the consequences of his ambitious pursuit of success but works very hard at trying to forget. With this revelation, the collapse becomes a symbol of the root foundation of achieving the American Dream: cut corners, never admit mistakes and don’t let those mistakes bother you on the next job no matter how tragic they might have been.
