The gift (a comb in a small, wrapped box) that Mr. Foster means to give to their daughter is a symbol of his deception and cruelty. As they are departing for the airport, he pretends to have forgotten the box inside, and he tells Mrs. Foster—who is pathologically afraid of being late to her flight—to wait in the car for him to find the gift. However, as Mrs. Foster soon discovers, he has hidden the box in between the car’s seats to purposely make her miss her flight. The gift is small and inconspicuous—it’s just a little box wrapped in white paper, one that could easily go missing—which is part of Mr. Foster’s attempt to maintain plausible deniability about losing the gift on purpose. This mirrors Mr. Foster’s general behavior towards Mrs. Foster: the subtle cruelty with which he makes her late for things without appearing to be malicious. However, finding the box hidden makes Mrs. Foster certain that his cruelty and deception have been intentional all along, which explicitly associates the box with the evil sides of Mr. Foster’s character. When Mrs. Foster begs him not to go back to the house to look for the box because “it’s only one of those silly combs anyway,” Mr. Foster becomes furious that she has “forgotten herself for once.” Her dismissal of the box is a way to sidestep his deception and cruelty towards her, which he will not allow.
The Gift Symbol Timeline in The Way Up to Heaven
