Signs and Symbols

I know its a little late for the Signs and Symbols discussion, but I tried my hardest not to listen to any of the discussion in class so as not to become biased.

As I was reading the story I jotted down notes and I'll just repost them and go from there

Everything went wrong
-The train, the bus, the walk. This seemed to me like the world telling them not to visit their son. The loss of life of the train was chance, the wait for the bus coincidence, and the rain on their walk is Design.

-Tiny unfledged bird in a puddle- This bird is a metaphor for their son, unfledged, meaning wings are not large enough for flight, therefore it crashes to the earth.This to me was one of the most powerful images linking the story to Daedalus and Icarus, and foreshadowing the son's possible death.

The names really jumped out at me, but I think I was looking to deep. Rebecca Borisovna- rebecca is biblical but the significance of the last name (which apparently means short/wolf) doesn't make sense, the father's brother Isaac "the Prince"-son of Abraham, biblical, so should we call the father Ishmael? also the mother talks of another family whose surname is Soloveichiks, which interestingly I learned (from epic google searching) means Nightingale in russian.

The other major allusion to Icarus,was when they describe the first time the child tried to kill himself "masterpiece of Inventiveness" (Daedalus-master inventor), learning to fly but wanted to tear a hole into his world. Much as Daedalus wanted to escape his world, so did the son wish to escape and fly away

Everything is a Cipher, and He is the Theme- This was profound to me because, you assume that the son is crazy, but how do we know this? The world shows him the symbols and he is the theme, they dont see them because they aren't about anyone but him, Like UPS, you notice thing when they are made apparent

I really liked when the illness was explained and how it kept building to a crescendo until it became that "great mountains of unbearable solidity and height sum up, in terms of granite and groaning firs [symbols only the son can decipher], the ultimate truth of his being"

the Parents' appartment is on the 3rd floor landing (threes again)

3 cards fall from the deck-- Knave(Jack) of hearts, 9 (3 sets of 3s) of spades, Ace of Spades
I thought the cards were significant so I googled all of them obsessively and was suprised by my results!!

So I plan on reading a bit deeply into this but These cards specifically foreshadow the death of the Son

Jack of Hearts A warm-hearted friend. A fair-haired youth; or a young person with Water signs predominating in his or her chart. ( most of this seems like gobbledy gook, but I took that jack of hearts means a young male)
9 of Spades Illness, accident, bad luck. The querent is at his/her personal low.
Ace of Spades Misfortune; sometimes associated with death or, more often, a difficult ending.
website where I got this rock solid information
http://www.cafeastrology.com/fortunetellingcards.html
Its pretty obvious that Nabokov was trying to tell us that the Son was going to die, and I've finally figured out that mystery.

More threes
The 3 colors in the jars: yellow, green, red
which according to color astrology...
Yellow- the most positive color, closest to light
Green- healing,life, and rebirth.
Red-passion, masculinity, danger
so you can read into those what you want, the cards were my masterpiece of intellect