Bright Lights, Big City

The Statue of Liberty first appears in the novel when the narrator gazes downriver at the monument after a night of dissipating himself in drink and drugs at a nightclub. In his state of dejection—that is, feeling abandoned by his estranged wife and, the night before, by his friend Tad—the symbol of hope and opportunity gets turned on its head and emblematizes lost hope.

The statue appears again when the narrator observes a souvenir Statue of Liberty during a visit to the trailer home of his future mother-in-law, Dolly. Amanda picks it up from its place on top of the TV set and observes that the tchotchke is “[her] mother all over” (71). The narrator notices that his girlfriend seemed afraid that he would mistake the object for being “her possession, her taste, afraid that [he] would identify her with Dolly” (71). As much as Amanda would like to disassociate herself from her mother’s tawdriness and lower-class background, she, too, is a product of her environment. The souvenir symbolizes both women’s ambitions to have a better life and to enjoy more sophisticated company outside of Kansas. This desire is what draws Amanda to the narrator, who becomes her metaphorical passport to the city that both she and her mother have fantasized about.