Slates

The slates the children’s work is tallied on represent freedom because when all of their marks are erased, they will be free to go back to their families. Because of this, the slates are associated with hope at the beginning of the novel as the children believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that they will be let free eventually. When the children finally realize that the lines will never go away, they start to lose hope because they have lost their belief that they will ever be free.

Chains

The chains that hold some children to their looms are an accurate representation of how masters keep some children bound to the factory, but they also symbolize how all of the children are, in reality, chained to their work. Only the children who misbehave are kept in chains, and some of them are even kept chained...