Plot Summary
An elderly couple tries to visit their deranged son in a sanatorium on his birthday. They are informed that he attempted to take his life and they cannot see him now. After their return home, the husband announces his decision to take him out of the sanatorium. The story concludes with mysterious telephone calls. The first two apparently misdialed calls are from a girl asking for "Charlie"; the story ends when the phone rings for the third time.
In the course of the story the reader learns many details of the couple's life: the unnamed couple is likely to be Jewish; had come from Russia; live probably in New York, depend financially upon the husband's brother, Isaac; had a German maid when they lived in exile in Germany; had an aunt, Rosa, who perished in the holocaust; and have a nephew who is a famous chess player. The elderly man feels that he is dying.
The son is unnamed, suicidal, and suffering from "referential mania", where "the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence". "Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme". Real people are excluded from this paranoia, and the condition is worse the further he is away from familiar surroundings. The son's condition is based on a real condition—compare ideas of reference.
Read more about this topic: Signs And Symbols
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