Symbolism In Dance In America

“Symbols and Signs” written by Vladimir Nabokov, and “Dance in America” written by Lorrie Moore, both examines parental responses to a child’s illness. The “Symbols and Signs”, is the story of severe mental debility of an unnamed child and the struggles of his parents to cope with it. Meanwhile, “Dance in America” is centered on the sufferings of narrator’s friend and his son named Eugene, who is dying from cystic fibrosis. The children in these stories differ in their relationship to their parents and their attitude towards illness. However, both parents experience hopelessness and hardships in response.
In the “Symbols and signs” both the parents and their son are living in two different and separated worlds as their son is languishing in a sanitarium, while they are living in a tenement house. Moreover, the son is suffering from a disease named “Referential mania” that makes his mind inaccessible to his parent minds and results in lack of bond between the two. The

In “Symbols and Signs” father who is financially not good enough and “wholly dependent on his brother Isaac” (Nabokov) wants to bring his son back home, as he believes that he will kill himself there and they will be to blame. But he seems helpless because of his material and emotional hardships. The parents and their son, both are suffering in two different realities. The clouds, trees etc. are conspiring against their son, while at the same time parents themselves are punished by poverty, fear and darkness.
In the same way, Simone and Cal, the parents of Eugene in “Dance in America” are cursed with impoverishment. “Maple seedlings have sprouted up through the dining room floorboards…. Scrabble in the walls. Paint is chipping everywhere in scales and blisters and flaps” (Moore 196). These lines illustrate the crummy condition of their house that manifestly delineates their financial