Bone's birth certificate is the primary symbol of the novel. Stamped with the word illegitimate, it decries the circumstances of Bone's birth. Symbolically, as long as the birth certificate takes that form, Bone is unable to escape her past history and her social illegitimacy. At the end of the novel, however, Bone must start her life over. Though this choice is forced upon her by Anney's desertion and by her own realization that "the child I had been was gone with the child she [Anney] had been," it still is a time of rebirth, a transformation physically signified by the birth certificate that Anney has somehow managed to obtain for her - one that lacks that accusatory and demeaning word.
The novel abounds with other symbols. The physical hunger that Bone feels when her.....
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