Dear Sidewalk is filled with metaphor. It’s a prime example of the cinema of easy symbology, where every moment and every physical reality is mined for meaning. It’s not enough that Gardner feels detached from the rest of humanity; he has to find literary significance in the sidewalk he tramps every day. He has to live on a boat parked in his friend’s driveway—not on land, but not at sea, unmoored from society but drifting nowhere. And he must collect stamps, petrifying the tools of human communication and locking them away, stripping them of their true value. His physical reality must be a key to understanding his emotional state. Gardner and Dear Sidewalk exist entirely in worlds of their own making.