The Candle

By looking back at the first page I was able to draw a connection between life, John Grady, his grandfather, and the candle. If you look at the candle as an image of life and that the wick burns until it’s gone. You can see that you live until your wick runs out. Once the wick is gone the only thing that remains is the excess wax, which is the lives you created or touched. From the lines “He pressed his thumbprint in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer. Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper-thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping.”(3) This shows John Grady not only morning the lost of his grandfather, but also wanting to leave his thumbprint on the world like his grandfather had done.