The Little Friend

The color blue symbolizes the glorified past as it exists in Harriet’s mind (not as it existed in the actual past). Because of her family’s embellished stories and the few objects she has to bolster them, Harriet imagines the past as someplace better than the present or the future—a place that precedes pain and loss. Harriet also imagines that Robin perpetually inhabits this perfect past, memorialized as an innocent, happy, uncomplicated child. Photographs and memories of Robin are often bathed in blue light, and Harriet seeks this same sort of “blue” relief from existence whenever she holds her breath in the pool. Various decorative objects from Tribulation are blue, and these symbolize how the past has been revised and glorified to be “prettier” than it actually was. Of course, Harriet is not able to literally travel back in time and bathe herself in this same blue light that Robin enjoys. The closest she gets is when she “loses herself” while floating and holding her breath because this is the closest she comes to death. Rather than imagining death as ultimate pain or loss, Harriet views it as freedom or release from loss.