The titular lion symbolizes Loss of Innocence and the accompanying changes that the narrator finds so disturbing. First referenced in connection with beginning junior high, it is a metaphor for a feeling that the narrator “[doesn’t] have a name for, but […] was there nonetheless like a lion, and roaring, roaring that way the biggest things do” (98). Like the transition to adolescence, the lion is unwelcome but unavoidable in its noise and potential danger.

The lion reappears at the very end of the text when the narrator reflects on the loss of the grinding ball: “We buried [the ball] because it was perfect. We didn’t tell my mother, but together it was all we talked about, til we forgot. It was the lion” (102). Here, the narrator recounts his and Sergio’s struggle with the perfection the ball represents: They want to preserve that perfection but ultimately realize the only way to do so is to “lose” the ball so that it can never be altered by later experience.