The Stranger

In the text, explosives symbolize the destruction that secrets can wreak in a character’s life. References to bombs, grenades, and other incendiaries appear at key moments when a secret is revealed or leading up to such a revelation. The text immediately associates this symbol with secrets when Adam feels a bomb countdown start in his head as the stranger suggests that Corinne faked her pregnancy. As Adam holds this information in his mind, the narration breaks for “Tick, tick, tick…” because he knows that with each passing minute, he’s getting closer to confronting Corinne with her lies (71).

Adam dreads this confrontation because him exposing her secret will be like “pulling the proverbial pin from the proverbial grenade” (49): It will cause indiscriminate damage to their perfect life in ways he can’t predict. Corinne also wants to be careful with how she explains her secret, and she compares her precarious position to walking in a minefield: “We’re in a minefield. […] Like someone just dropped us right in the middle of it, and if we move to fast in any direction, we’re going to step on an explosive and blow this whole thing up” (88). Corinne wants to mitigate the potential damage by explaining one secret without revealing the other, which requires delicacy.