A Tangle of Knots

The unnamed traveling salesman is a symbol of fate. When he first appears in the Prologue, he is described as “a man in a gray suit. He might have been forty, he might have been older, and he was, quite easily, the largest man in the bus station, his enormous frame threatening even the brick support posts for sturdiest structure” (3). His agelessness and larger-than-life size add to the sense that there is something otherworldly about the man. His Talent is tying knots, which provides another fitting symbol of destiny. As he tells the young Mason Burgess, “If you don’t know the trick, it’s a muddled predicament. But in fact each loop of every knot is carefully placed, one end twisting right into the other in a way you might not have expected” (5). The same can be said of the characters’ surprisingly tangled lives. Graff also uses color symbolism to develop the traveling salesman’s significance. He wears a gray suit, and Talents form a “gray haze” when they are separated from their owners (176). Fate determines whether individuals will be Talented or Fair and decides which Talents people receive. Likewise, the traveling salesman gives