Baseball

Throughout the narrative, the game of baseball is an important metaphoric illustration of where Turner is situated on his journey of transformation. In the beginning, his inability to get used to a new way of playing (i.e. slow pitch instead of fastball) establishes him as an outsider in his new community; his practicing with Lizzie illustrates his capacity to learn new techniques of both the game and of friendship; and, eventually, his newly acquired skills reveal themselves in conjunction with his newly-acquired sense of compassion, insight, and sense of justice.

Mrs. Hurd's House

This house, with its shutters painted a defiantly different color from those on the other houses in Phippsburg, symbolizes the sense of freedom of its inhabitant (the elderly, widowed Mrs. Hurd). Both the house and the person who live there inspire thoughts of independence in Turner, and action taken to realize those...