Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Videos
When Christine rents Christine and Little Big Man at Village
Video, she describes the movies as Rayona’s inheritance, but they
come to stand as more than just physical gifts. Christine chooses
the videos specifically because they are films that show the kind
of tough determination that Christine hopes Rayona sees in her.
When Christine is gone, the movies remind Rayona of her and become
surrogates for her physical presence. When Christine, Rayona, Ida,
and Dayton watch the films together, they create a final memory
of unity and come to stand for family harmony as well. Christine
picks the movies with ambitious goals, yet they exceed even her
expectations and shape the legacy they are supposed to symbolize.
Ellen’s Letter
Rayona finds a torn letter on the ground while she is
doing custodial work at Bearpaw Lake State Park. The letter becomes
Rayona’s symbol of the perfect family. In fact, the piece of paper
Rayona finds is just a fragment that does not say too much, but
the basic ideas it includes—having parents on good enough terms
that they will sign a letter together—are so foreign to Rayona that
she magnifies them into the rosiest portrait imaginable. Only when
Rayona has breakfast with her mother at a diner several weeks later
does she throw the letter away, a gesture that indicates that Rayona
has finally found peace with her real family.
Braids
References to braids are made subtly throughout A
Yellow Raft In Blue Water, and they become a symbol of
how the lives of different family members, like the different parts
of the story, can overlap and form a more complete whole. The most
prominent of these references is the one that ends the novel, when
Father Hurlburt and Ida go up to her roof on the night that the
world is supposed to end and she starts braiding her hair in the
darkness. Dorris ends the novel with this image because it is an
apt symbol for the novel itself. The stories told by Rayona, Christine,
and Ida are all part of a greater story, and this story can be told
in full only if their narratives are looked at together. Therefore,
Dorris uses the image of the braid—three strands of hair that are
woven together, pulled one over the other and merged—to illustrate
further how his novel and the lives of its characters overlap and
complement each other.
