The Tiny Dancer symbolizes precarity. It’s not a safe, stable home. Chance doesn’t want to be there, and living in the sailboat makes him feel hopeless. He describes the place as an “old, weather-beaten thirty-foot sailboat” (34). He adds, “[I]t’s a lousy place to live. It’s so small that my dad and I can hardly turn around without bumping into each other” (35). Chance’s dad contributes to the precarity. Like the sailboat, his dad is unpleasant. He doesn’t abuse Chance, but he’s not reliable or trustworthy. Chance connects his dad to the sailboat; together, they represent a repellent, stagnant existence. The sailboat isn’t going anywhere, and neither is Chance’s dad. For Chance, hope means escaping the boat and his father. The dad notes the precarious situation when he tells Chance, “I guess there isn’t a helluva lot for you to stay for, is there?” (165).

The precarity represented by the boat pushes Chance into another precarious situation as a smuggler. As he must keep suspicious red packages on the boat, he increases the boat’s precarity. Now, the boat isn’t unsafe because of his father—it’s insecure because of Chance. Yet if Chance’s dad didn’t make the boat unstable in the first place, then Chance wouldn’t have felt the pressure to accept the “easy money.