The Second Coming

Throughout The Second Coming, stars and the universe beyond Earth are often symbols that represent the mental state of various characters. Allison uses stars as an allegory for her own episodes of seclusion, suggesting that her sense of self can expand and then collapse for self-protection. She tells her psychologist, Dr. Duk, that “a red giant collapses into a white dwarf. Hard and bright as a diamond. That’s what I was trying to do when my mother found me in the closet going down to my white dwarf” (90). Allison describes her red dwarf self as a form of vulnerability, indicating that she is too large and trying to please too many other people. After the strain of living up the expectations of others becomes too much, she must collapse into a smaller, denser state like a white dwarf star. The language she uses to describe the white dwarf, hard and bright, indicates that her periods of nonverbal isolation are a form of self-protection.

Similarly, Will uses stars as a literal symbol for human brain matter. When he meditates upon his father’s suicide by gunshot, he imagines the moment when “brain cells which together faltered and fell short, now flowered and flew apart, flung like stars around the whole dark world” (149).