The symbolism of Wife’s Lot as used in Amy Bloom’s short story “Hold Tight”
...a city on fire. Her looking back at the city is showing us that she is moving away from it. The fact that it is a destroyed city without even rubble around it is symbolic of a place being completely destroyed with such power that not even a trace of it will be left behind. This is representative of the mother’s cancer and her attempts to escape it. The fire is symbolic of cancer. Both, fire and cancer are both destructive. One destroys the city in a powerful way and the other destroys the body. The Muslim girl fleeing the city, with its sticky flames and no rubble, is representative of Della’s mother fighting her cancer. Wife’s Lot includes a Muslim girl which is symbolic of the fact that cancer is indiscriminate of who it kills. Bloom does a good job explaining the Muslim girl’s emptiness when she writes, “Or it could have been just the upright shroud itself, or a woman in a full-length muslin wrap. But the Body was no longer alive; it had set into something dense and immobile”. (Bloom 553) The Muslim religion, combined with sexism commonly suppresses women causing them to feel emotional pain and depression. Emotional pain and depression can be like a disease, or like cancer. The Muslim girl is born as a Muslim girl. She had no choice in the matter. Just like Della’s mother randomly caught cancer. Therefore, the Muslim girl can be symbolic of cancer and its indiscriminate selection of whom it shall consume and eventually kill. The setting of Wife’s Lot is a sky with, “grays and blues, beginning to storm, and in the foreground, in the barren landscape, was...