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While the family is eating at The Tower, “The Tennessee Waltz” played on the jukebox. Tennessee is where the grandmother originally wanted to go but settles on going to Florida with her family. As the family is headed to Florida on vacation they pass a cotton field that has five or six graves, the same number of people as in the car. Other symbolic characteristics are the town they pass through, Toombsboro, and the description of the house with its six white columns. These subtle symbolic messages cause the reader to anticipate that the family will soon die. As the family is driving, they turn down a dark road that is “hilly and there were sudden washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous embankments” (O’Connor 374). This is symbolic because it represents the dangers that the family will soon be facing. O’Connor uses allegory to describe the woods where the wreck happened as being “tall and dark and deep” (375). The Misfit has the family hauled into the woods where they would be shot and killed. The sky is described throughout the end of the story in two different ways. When The Misfit speaks about the sky it is described as being cloudless and sunless. This depiction of the sky is a
