The red convertible symbolizes freedom. After receiving insurance money following the destruction of his restaurant in a tornado, Lyman purchases the vehicle. Lyman and Harry bond over the vehicle and all it allows them to do.

The spend a summer using the car to travel. During their travels, they learn even more about each other and deepen their relationship while learning about the new places they visit. Without this freedom, they would be bound to their reservation in North Dakota.

After the summer, Harry is sent to the war in Vietnam. Eventually he is captured and held as a prisoner of war, which is a very tangible lack of freedom. During this time, Lyman works on the car to make small repairs needed after a long summer of traveling. This juxtaposition is an interesting way to present the symbol of freedom.

When Harry returns from war, he is a changed man. He does not show interest in the car or look forward to travelling anymore, which symbolizes that once freedom is taken away, it’s often not easy to return to it.

Lyman intentionally damages the car in the hope that working on the car will bring Harry out of his negative state of mind. This idea backfires and instead of collaborating, Harry opts to handle the repairs without Lyman’s help.

After a fistfight actually brings the brothers closer, Harry drowns in a river. The narrative ends with Lyman’s setting the car slide into the river, a symbol that without Harry, Lyman cannot enjoy freedom and his freedom will probably never fully return after the death of his brother.

When the brothers spontaneously buy the red convertible, it symbolizes their youth and freedom. It symbolizes unbounded opportunity and optimism. At the end of the story, when Lyman releases the clutch to let the car roll into the flooded river, it symbolizes lost youth, lost love, lost brotherhood, lost hope and lost opportunity; it symbolizes lost chances.

Even though the red convertible is bought with money from two disasters (part of Erdrich's extensive foreshadowing)--the loss of Lyman's Joliet Cafe and the loss of Henry's job ("Henry had two checks--a week's extra pay for being laid off, and his regular check from the Jewel Bearing Plant")--it still symbolizes optimism and opportunity for them. In their youth and enthusiasm, it symbolizes to them--they feel it as symbolizing--a promise of future opportunity and good luck. They see it as a living thing that promises reward and joy: "We went places in that car, me and Henry."

There it was, parked, large as life. Really as if it was alive. ... That car reposed, calm and gleaming .... Then, before we had thought it over at all, the car belonged to us....

After Henry returns from Vietnam, torn up and agitated psychologically and, in some ways, physically (a condition represented and symbolized by the lip he bit through), the red convertible symbolizes both lost hope and youth and, ironically, a return to...