27 pages • 54 minutes read
So What Are You, Anyway?
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Symbols & Motifs
Carole’s Doll
The doll that Carole carries is a physical representation of her youth and innocence, while the way that Henry Norton treats the doll directly contributes to the author’s explorations of both the Loss of Innocence and Prejudice as an Attack on Identity and Belonging. When Henry first enters the narrative stage, the narrator depicts him “holding [Carole’s] doll upside down” (Paragraph 2). He is mistreating the doll, and by extension Carole. His rough handling of the doll foreshadows the cruelty with which he will treat Carole.
Throughout Carole’s flight, she attempts to keep track of and care for the doll in the same way she is attempting to care for and protect herself. Even when Carole goes to the restroom, she takes the doll with her. In this way, the author is symbolically conveying Carole’s unconscious desperation to safeguard her own innocence and purity.
The doll’s appearance further underscores Hill’s examinations of Prejudice as an Attack on Identity and Belonging. The doll is Black, and Henry attacks the doll’s perceived race before attacking Carole’s racial identity: “That’s a Negro doll. That’s race. Negro” (Paragraph 52). The doll belongs to Carole and is a literal representation of a child, so it symbolizes Carole’s powerlessness. Just as the doll cannot speak for itself, Carole struggles to defend both her right to belong and her sense of identity when Henry and Betty relentlessly question her.
The Plane
The plane that Carole takes from Toronto to her grandparents’ house is a symbol of entrapment. Although it has a destination and Carole is taking the flight voluntarily, she cannot escape the confines of the plane when its atmosphere becomes increasingly hostile. The way that Carole reacts to the plane taking off foreshadows the way that she will feel when the Nortons begin to verbally attack her: “She feels a hollowness in her stomach when they lift into the air. Her ears plug and stay that way” (Paragraph 15). The physical sensations that Carole experiences in this scene portend the discomfort and powerlessness she will experience at the Nortons’ hands throughout the flight.
Ultimately, the plane turns into an inescapable realm within which Carole is involuntarily thrust into adulthood. When she boards the plane, she is still an innocent child, but she loses this innocence throughout the flight due to the Nortons’ abuse. She can neither flee the couple nor control how their words and questions change her senses of self and belonging.
Henry and Betty Norton
The Nortons are symbolic representations of aggression, racism, and bigotry. As soon as the couple enters the narrative stage, they treat Carole with condescension and derision. Henry holds “her doll upside down,” resists letting her out of her seat to use the restroom, and badgers her with questions about her parents, her birthplace, and her destination (Paragraph 2). His character is therefore the instigator of the offenses against Carole.
While Henry’s character is a one-dimensional antagonist, his wife Betty is equally dangerous in that her behaviors are contradictory. Though she holds the same racist beliefs as her husband, she initially presents herself as a harmless figure who has Carole’s best interests in mind. Over the course of the flight, her true prejudices begin to surface: She not only tells Henry that “the world isn’t ready for” biracial children like Carole, but later pesters Carole about the color of her parents’ skin and scoffs at her for being sensitive when Carole decides to switch seats (Paragraph 34). The couple’s behaviors in tandem, therefore, make Carole’s flight uncomfortable and hostile. Hill is using the Nortons as micro representations of the bigotry that Black and biracial citizens experience within larger cultural contexts.
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