In The New Yorker, the story was published under the title "Symbols and Signs", a decision by the editor Katharine White.
In the course of the story the reader learns many details of the unnamed couple's life: they are Russian Jews who went into exile after the revolution; depend financially upon the husband's brother, Isaac; had a German maid when they lived in Germany; had an aunt, Rosa, and many other relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust; and have a nephew who is a famous chess player.
The son suffers from "referential mania", where "the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence".
Regarding "beech", Drescher argues that it is the husband's misreading of the label, "an example of typographical free indirect discourse," and is one of the story's many references to the Holocaust, specifically the Buchenwald concentration camp.
[4] Some critics have argued that the story's many details can be deciphered into a message—for instance that the son has committed suicide, or that he is in an afterlife and free from his torments,[5] or that the third phone call is from him, saying that he has escaped from the asylum.
[3] However, the predominant interpretation[5] is that the story inveigles the reader into an attempt at deciphering the details and thus "over-reading", which is "another, milder form of referential mania".