25 pages • 50 minutes read
The Lamp at Noon
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Symbols & Motifs
The Lamp
The lamp is a symbol throughout the story of the “faith or dream with which to make the dust and poverty less real” (9). Ross does not necessarily pass judgement on the nature of such faith or dreams, never defining them as objectively good or bad. Rather, the lamp, like the main characters’ circumstances, is simply part of what is.
Because Ellen does not possess such faith or dreams, and Paul does, the lamp serves to highlight the depth of the conflict between Paul and Ellen. At times, it highlights the starkness of their features: “[t]he lamp between them threw strong lights and shadows on their faces” (4). The lamp is also associated with the sun, a far brighter sort of light. As Ellen dares to open the door, just to look outside, “for a moment through the tattered clouds the sun raced like a wizened orange” (1). Ellen observes that the sun “shed a soft, diffused light, dim and yellow as if it were the light from the lamp reaching out through the open door” (1). She then quickly closes the door. This type of light is not for Ellen, not something that touches her. Rather, it is Paul who is drawn to this light. His eyes are fixed on the lamp during their argument, and in the end, as he carries Ellen and his dead child home, he keeps “his eyes before him,” set on “the sunset [that] smouldered like a distant fire” (14).
The symbolism of the lamp helps to explain Ellen’s shouted words, as Paul imagines them, on finally seeing that his land has come to ruin: “Desert, you fool – the lamp lit at noon” (5)! The land is dead, Paul imagines Ellen saying, and Paul is indeed a fool for having seen only his vision of the future where there was, in fact, simply desert.
Finally, the absence of the lamp’s light indicates hopelessness when Paul discovers that Ellen has taken the baby and fled into the storm: “The door was open, the lamp blown out, the crib empty” (8). Paul’s failure is not so much that he has this faith or dream, but that he forgot how essential his wife and child were to it, neglecting them in the present for the sake of indulging his fantasy of the future. The extinguished lamp foreshadows the death of their son.
Confined Spaces
Ross uses the motif of confined spaces throughout the short story in order to amplify the sense of emotional and physical entrapment that Ellen and Paul experience. The drought and relentless dust storms have reduced their environment to the confines of their house and stable and the isolated farmland. The stable where Paul spends much of his time is like a cave: “The first dim stalls and rafters led the way into cavern-like obscurity” (8). In the stable, “[t]here was a silence […] a deep fastness of it enclosed by rushing wind and creaking walls” (4).
In turn, the two-room house where Ellen and Paul reside is cramped and claustrophobic. The ever-present dust restricts their vision and coats their throats. Their identities have been distorted and obscured by the dust. Paul is forced to wear a cap and a smock, and the dust distorts his features—prematurely aging him causing further alienation and isolation. This reoccurring motif emphasizes entrapment, isolation, and the lack of options that the couple has.
Ellen’s Eyes
Ellen’s eyes are symbolic throughout the story of a focus on the present and reality versus a focus on an imagined future. Toward the beginning, as she stands inside alone at the window, Ellen looks outside and sees their circumstances for what they are: “[w]ide like that they [her eyes] had looked out to the deepening ruin of the storm” (1). As a result, Ellen’s eyes are rigid, with a “curious immobility,” and difficult to close.
Ellen cannot look away, in a metaphorical sense, from the desolation they face, while Paul is largely insulated from the present by his plans and dreams. Ellen “fixed her eyes upon the clock” (2), Paul’s eyes are “fixed on the yellow lamp flame” (7). In other words, Ellen grasps that their time is dwindling along with their resources, but Paul is still too loyal to the land to believe it would so completely betray him. Ellen asks Paul, at one point, “[a]re you blind” (5), a question that later prompts Paul to ask himself if he is only “a blind and stubborn fool” (10). This question is never fully answered. Even when the winds clear, and “the fields before him struck his eyes to comprehension” (14), Paul cannot imagine that he “might or should abandon the land” (14).
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