Describe symbolism in Four Summers by Joyce Carol Oates

In the story's most Gothic moment, the monstrous adults force the terrified Sissie to drink alcohol. They laugh at her, criticize her, and initiate her into their hopeless, cruel world. The scene is also a wicked ceremony of initiation. The drink the grown-ups force Sissie to drink, however, is not a magic potion, but rather the liquid of their futility and entrapment. After this rite of passage Sissie is symbolically one of them.