Whirligig

Stars represent Brent’s growing curiosity and knowledge. Before he starts to learn their names and constellations, he finds them inaccessible. At the start of his journey in Washington, “he looked up at the stars, glinting silently, a movie without a soundtrack. Or was he simply deaf to their music? He realized he knew no constellations”(49). As he learns more about them, he is able to appreciate them more. His familiarity with the stars and constellations grows alongside his development of independent thought. On the way to San Diego, Brent “spoke the word Deneb in his mind and felt himself to be Adam, naming the new world around him (63).” Brent is learning to see the world anew in his “afterlife.”

In his solitude, he also regards stars as friends and takes comfort in their company: “when he stepped off the bus, he'd remain in a world of nameless strangers. He looked out. Except that he now knew Deneb. And Vega. And Altair (65).” This represents the new self-sufficiency he has acquired through learning. 

The motif of chess highlights Brent’s transformation from helplessness to independence. Brent’s last name is Bishop, like the chess piece, and he thinks of himself as various pieces throughout his book. At the party that he attends in the first chapter, his classmates are planning to have a human chess game, a metaphor for the often-brutal hierarchy of high school social life. When Chaz moves him around like a bishop piece, Brent feels humiliated and helpless. Before he kills himself, the voice in his head tells him, “They are the pawns. You are a king” (18). The reference to chess, toward the end of his journey, points to a new sense of autonomy: “Though his last name was Bishop, Brent felt like a rook, riding north on I-95, making another end-to-end chess move along the country's perimeter” (115). 

When Brent gets to the party in the first chapter, he compares the most popular students in his class to the Greek gods of Mount Olympus. This thought illustrates his worship of status, looks, and money. The next time he thinks about Mount Olympus, Brent reflects that he is laboring in atonement like Hercules. These juxtaposed associations with Mount Olympus reveal the drastic change Brent’s worldview undergoes after his car crash.

Though his family’s attitude toward religion has left him unable to derive comfort from it, Brent relates toward the biblical figures of Adam and Cain on his journey. When he is building a new worldview for himself, in his second life after the crash, Brent feels “himself to be Adam, naming the new world around him” (63). Later, a sidewalk preacher seems to single him out with his sermon about Cain. Condemned to wander the earth as punishment for killing his brother, Cain’s story can be seen as an allegory for Brent’s.