The Symbol Hands

The symbolism of hands presents itself a few times over the course of the book. One of the prime examples I found was the when the book said Emilio had his hands open to God while others had their hands clenched. I searched in our encyclopedia for the explanation behind open vs clenched hands and found it to be very interesting.
Open hands meant blessing, welcome and protection whereas clenched hands meant aggression and threat. Transferring these meanings to the book, it is saying Emilio was welcoming God where others were seeing God as a threat.

Jessica Frias

An Addition to Hands

There have been many posts about hands on this blog but it is necessary because the symbol of hands is a very important and prominent symbol throughout the book. As described earlier in the blog, hands are considered to be the tools of tools and hands being so important in what make humans unique, taking that away from someone can have them lose their identity as someone of worth or even have them lose their connection to their humanity. Emilio is trying to think of why they would do such a thing to his hands and he knew they did not mean evil intentions because the aliens often did this to their own friends. This shows how different people can have different views on what can be considered evil. For the people on earth, it is seen as evil because it is unknown and they do not understand the reasoning behind it but for the aliens they did not have evil intentions at all. Emilio thinks they did this either because; to them, having long hands is more beautiful to them or for the alien that did this to his hands to show everyone that they can afford to house useless dependents in his household. This is evidence that it is very difficult to classify anything as evil because there are always many motives or points of view to any action.

Another hands connection that can be made is that since hands are said that they may almost be said to speak. Emilio’s hands are destroyed in the beginning, so he speaks as little as possible but when he gets his hand bracers to help him move his hands and function slightly better, he begins to speak more often. By the end of the book when Emilio has the newest bracers that are comfortable on his arms and function well, he is speaking about what happened to him (the most he ever has spoken) and eventually tells John Candotti everything which seemed like it would never happen in the beginning of the book while his hands were rendered useless.

-Adam Zack