The narrator’s brief case is his literal “baggage.” Presented in the first chapter after making his graduation speech, the brief case travels with the narrator throughout the novel, accumulating the signs of the narrator’s past. The brief case becomes a sign of the changeability of the narrator’s identity: he, like the brief case, is simply a vessel for the events have come to occupy his body and mind. At the novel’s end, the narrator is forced to burn most of the brief case’s contents in order create a light to see by. This act is a recognition that the past must be reckoned with in order to move forward into the future.