Red Star Biscuit Collective + National Biscuit Company

The Red Star Biscuit Collective and the National Biscuit Company—Russian and American biscuit corporations, respectively—described in "The Line" are important symbols of the extent to which Towles considers partisan politics mostly obfuscatory in the sense that things are not so different under either communism or capitalism. In brief, upon arriving in America, Pushkin and Irina's circumstances are a perfect mirror to the ways they arrived in Moscow at the beginning of the story, with Irina joining the Communist Party and Pushkin waiting in lines on behalf of other people. The most obvious parallel, however, is the biscuit company that Irina comes across within minutes of her arrival, which is a mirror image of the biscuit company in Russia, indicating the story's thesis that human nature transcends location or political identity.

Signatures

The signatures that Timothy absent-mindedly copies—and...