Blindfold

The blindfolds that The Flying Avalons wear symbolize the extreme circumstances that define Anna's young life. The narrator explains that her mother is most comfortable living in risky or even dangerous situations, and attributes her ability to navigate her house while blind to her past training as a blindfolded trapeze artist. As the story progresses, the concept of vision becomes a motif that the author uses to suggest the narrator's own discomfort with the impending future of her mother's death.

Books and Reading

Reading symbolizes a different kind of fantasy than that represented by Anna's time as a trapeze artist. Once Anna learns how to read, she replaces her time in the circus with reading, what the narrator calls "one form of flying for another" (15). For both Anna and the narrator, reading, writing, and storytelling become ways of experiencing the exhilaration of being alive.

Gravestone

The...