This is a story about how the balloon explores the audience's response to it and the relationship with the narrator's consciousness. The balloon itself is the symbolic representation of the story, so that the reader is forced to confront and respond to the story in the same way that the citizens of New York City must confront and respond to the balloon. The balloon can represent any imaginative origin, as demonstrated by the audience. The mention of the balloon as having a "deliberate lack of finish" that gave the "surface a rough forgotten quality" reinforced the idea that the balloon was an art object designed to provoke public and private reactions. A clunky, aimless balloon that suddenly appears in New York City, covering nearly the entire southern half of Manhattan, and spanning twenty-five city blocks. The balloon was inflated by the narrator one night while the people were sleeping. The narrator first refers to the appearance of the balloon as a situation, but situations involve a set of circumstances that lead to a resolution that evokes a variety of responses. The balloon test...