Confined: A Junior Narrative Diptych by Sonia Tagare (2012)

This diptych is symbolic of a tragic story of a young high school boy who was bullied relentlessly everyday and was, one day, stuffed into a locker against his will by the same bullies. Little did the bullies know that the boy was claustrophobic. Confined within the tiny space, the boy knew he was going to die from lack of air circulation. Eventually, the boy sees black, and he slumps back into the locker, lifeless. The next day, the owner of the locker, opens it only to have the young boy's dead body burst out of the locker like styrofoam bursting from a tight box. Although he could have survived had he not been so petrified, his claustrophobia caused him to lose sight of reality and to give into the jaws of death. As shown in the diptych, a cardboard box is piled up to the brim with pieces of styrofoam. The first picture represents the boy in the locker with no air to move. The second picture is of a rope, which squeezes the cardboard box, and pieces of styrofoam are falling to the ground. The rope, tied together at the top of the box, forms an X, which signifies death. While the styrofoam is symbolic of the boy's life and the cardboard box is symbolic of the locker, the rope is symbolic of the boy's claustrophobia. As shown in the second picture, the pieces of the styrofoam falling on the ground represent the body being burst out of the locker when finally released from his claustrophobia.