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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Sully’s Hair-Rope
Sully, whose father was a rope-maker, carries with him a rope composed of strands of hair from the various people whom he has consumed. When she first sees the rope, Maren is horrified but fascinated. As Sully tells Maren about his life and worldview, she comes to think of the rope as something beautiful, similar to a piece of art or a loving memorial to the deceased. Later, however, she discovers that Sully has lied to her about his own life, and he admits to her that he does not wait for his victims to die peacefully, as he previously claimed, but rather, murders them before eating their corpses, Maren’s perception of the rope of hair swiftly changes. She notices, for the first time, that if Sully’s first story were true, then the rope would primarily consist of the white and gray hair characteristic of the elderly. With her new understanding, she is disgusted by the rope, which attests to nothing more than a long history of violence, control, and death. After Lee overpowers and consumes Sully, Maren simply throws the hair-rope away, suggesting that she has overcome Sully’s influence and has moved beyond her former mentor.
Maren’s Birth Certificate
As Maren travels across the vast expanse of the United States, she is only able to hold onto two possessions from the beginning to the end of the novel: her notebook and her birth certificate. For Maren, her birth -certificate is the only document that attests to her identity, and it carries great emotional (as well as legal) importance to her. A birth certificate, she states, is a “sacred document,” even to a “monster” like herself.” Reading over her birth-certificate helps to ground Maren, reminding her that she is, despite her condition, a human being, and that she does have parents, grandparents, and a real identity. Her birth certificate, then, affirms her sense of her own humanity.
Cicadas
While attending summer camp at age eight, a young boy named Luke shows Maren his collection of discarded cicada husks, leaving some for her in her cabin as gifts. He describes to her the life cycle of a cicada, an insect which spends much of its life under-ground and, in its final form, sheds the shell that it has outgrown when molting. After she kills and consumes Luke, Maren is horrified by her actions, feeling both guilty for what she has done and terrified by the possibility that she will be found out. She wishes, in this moment, that she were like a cicada, which can leave behind its old, outdated shell and begin anew. The cicada, then, represents for Maren the possibility of rebirth that she so desperately desires but feels is not possible for her because of her condition.
