Name: Professor: Course: Date: Part 1 In the book, after Astrid’s mother is prisoned for killing her boyfriend, Astrid is taken away to foster home. Before the social services take her away, she takes some of her mother’s possessions and among them is a folding knife. This is a one of the significant symbols that is used in the book. It represents the security element, to her mother as it was the knife that she used to stab her boyfriend with. Her mother had been the source of protection and now that she was away in prison, Astrid was vulnerable; she needed something that would protect her as her mother had once done. Astrid took the knife to create in herself the sense that she could handle her life the way her mother did. When her mother tried to defend herself and her daughte
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