“We perform acts that seem like acts but in fact they’re symbols”

“We perform acts that seem like acts but in fact they’re symbols” is Andrea’s explanation of how an action can carry a meaning that exceeds its visible form—and how that private meaning can still cause harm. As he tries to justify giving his mother’s bracelet to Costanza, the phrase exposes the distance between what he intended and what his actions did to his daughter and family.

The Bracelet as a Symbol

Andrea tells Giovanna that he had considered the bracelet Costanza’s long before he gave it to her. He says that when he saw it, he thought of how much Costanza would like it and how beautiful it would look on her. After his mother died, he wanted the bracelet intensely; he struck Vittoria when she insisted that it belonged to her. When Giovanna was born, Andrea asked Vittoria to give the bracelet to the child, and Vittoria agreed. But he passed it on to Costanza almost immediately. In his account, the gift was not simply a transfer of jewelry: it enacted a decision he felt he had made inwardly much earlier.

That explanation makes the bracelet a material object caught between competing claims. It belonged to Andrea’s mother, was fought over with Vittoria, was briefly given to Giovanna, and was ultimately handed to Costanza. Andrea interprets his gift as an expression of attachment, but its passage through the family also records conflict and divided loyalties. The word “symbols” gives his action an inward logic; it does not undo the outward history of the object.

Andrea’s Explanation and Its Limits

The phrase comes during Andrea’s chaotic confession to Giovanna. He presents his relationship with Costanza as a discovery: after a work trip, a dinner with other people, and a night talking alone in a hotel room, they realized that their love was not brotherly. He insists that this feeling did not continue as an affair, that he had not betrayed Giovanna’s mother, and that he had loved her for years. His account of the bracelet joins this defense of his feelings to the claim that he had meant to do good for Costanza.

Yet Andrea also admits that his intended kindness may have harmed her. He says he did not wrong Giovanna, who was a newborn when he gave the bracelet away, and reasons that in his own mind he had already given it to Costanza long before. The expression therefore does not settle the moral question; it reveals the terms on which he tries to settle it. For him, the act’s true significance lies in what it symbolized to him, even as the narrative preserves the hurt and disputes attached to what he actually did.

Good, Evil, and the Work of Interpretation

Andrea follows the expression with a warning to Giovanna: “good becomes evil without your realizing it”. The two statements link symbolic intention to unintended consequence. A gesture may begin as an effort to protect or please someone and acquire a damaging meaning through its effects. Andrea’s explanation is not a claim that intention and consequence are identical; it is an attempt to understand how an action can change moral character without its maker recognizing the change in time.

The scene also makes that interpretation unstable. Giovanna listens while Andrea piles up justifications, accusations, self-denigration, and reasons for his conduct. She says that the matter concerns him, her mother, and Costanza, not her, and reflects that he seems to know evil better than Vittoria. His account offers her a theory of symbols, but its emotional disorder leaves the theory entangled with the need to defend himself. The expression endures as a compact statement of the book’s concern with the difference between what people believe their actions mean and the harm those actions can carry.