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White Shirts
White shirts appear repeatedly throughout the book as a symbol of corporatism, incompetence, and the inhumanity of bureaucracy. Men in white shirts prevent young Ove from extinguishing his childhood home when it catches fire. Ove…
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Cars
Throughout the book, different makes of cars are used to signify different characters’ values and temperaments. For instance, Saabs: when Ove’s father dies, one of the only things he leaves for his son is the…
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Houses
Ove loves building and fixing houses because they're fair and predictable: you get out of a house what you put into it. Because of this, houses function as a symbol for Ove's love of fairness…
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Color (Pink)
The narrator asserts that Ove lived his life in black and white before he met Sonja. After meeting her, she brought color into his world by adding love and life to his existence. In…
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