Cribb statue

The Cribb statue is the companion figure to the Molineaux statue, one of a pair whose recurring boxing pose makes them emblems of opposed forces. After Oliver and Barbara are found dead beneath the rubble, the children’s struggle over the intact figures ends with both broken, giving the statues’ final appearance a stark place in the novel’s closing scene.

The Matched Figures

The Cribb statue appears as part of a pair with the Molineaux statue. When Ann sees the children among the debris, Josh has a familiar figure in hand; the Molineaux remains intact, its black head conspicuously clean against the dust. The companion figure is also intact. The pair’s enduring pugilistic pose links them as objects, but also makes their opposition legible before anyone takes hold of them.

Found in the Rubble

After Ann discovers Oliver and Barbara dead beneath the collapsed house, Eve and Josh search through the debris. Eve reaches for the Cribb statue and wraps her fingers around its torso, while Josh grasps the Molineaux statue at its base. For a moment they hold the figures with equal strength. Their discovery of the statues amid the wreckage briefly restores the objects from debris to recognizable possessions, still whole despite the destruction around them.

The Pair Is Broken

The children’s competing claims turn the intact figures into the immediate focus of a tug-of-war. Josh declares the Molineaux his; Eve insists on the same claim, and the statues snap apart in their hands. Ann watches them study the pieces of plaster in their palms, stunned. She then turns toward the entrance, leaving the broken figures behind.

The scene makes the statues’ paired opposition more than a visual motif: after the parents’ fatal conflict, the children reproduce a struggle over possession, and the figures themselves cannot remain intact through it. Their breakage is not merely another detail in the wreckage. It is the final reversal of the statues’ familiar permanence and fighting pose: the pair that had seemed fixed in an eternal contest is reduced to fragments by a new contest over who owns it.