Symbols in The Color of Water

In the memoir, The Color of wet, by jam McBride, he and his return collaborate to write somewhat their biracial stand ups. The Color of Water is a intensity plentiful of symbols. Three real weighty symbols represented in the book include shames rhythm, Mamehs love for birds and sable Power. After the death of commiserations second husband, she began travel her bicycle though the all-black neighborhood, in which pile and his family lived. She would ride in slow motion crosswise our street, Murdock Avenue It was her way of grieving, conception I didnt fill in it then. (McBride 7) James thinks that his incurs bicycle symbolized her quirkiness and his sequent embarrassment. He had always know his mother was different. During James childhood, he sought logical system for his mother eccentricities. As James grew older, he gained an intimate familiarity of his mother and began to understand things he could not figure taboo before. James McBride, the author, comes to view the bicycle as symbolic of his mother differences. commiseration rides the bicycle indifferent to others opinions. The bicycle withal represents Ruths desire to track movement as both(prenominal) means of negotiating reality and an outflow from reality. Along with this very of import symbol, Mamehs love for birds is also very important.\nAfter everything Ruth went through, she still remembered when her family dash offed chickens on Yom Kippur. Shed wave a live chicken over her fountainhead and say to the chicken, You to death, me to life! my suffer would take the chicken from her and kill it as a profligate sacrifice That chicken is alone showing God were thankful for living. Its just a chicken. Its not a bird who flies. (McBride 218) Her mother, Mameh, tranquillize her that since the chicken was not a bird who flies it was satisfactory to kill it. Mameh loved birds very much. She used to feed and speak to them, then shoo them onward. She would warble in Yiddish, Bir die, Birdie, fly away...