As a general rule, first class items represent things rather than relationships.

The birth mark represents various things throughout the story.

In games where the game flow unit is time, turns may represent such things as years, months, weeks or days.

We can easily represent things as we wish them to be.

And I'm always representing things that exist just for a limited amount of time.

The characters in the story represent good things or bad things.

They represent things such as strategies, tactics, or unexpected events.

The strange people he meets are characters who represent good and bad things in life.

Labels can represent different things depending on the language of interest.

"In the middle there is something that represents things as they are," she said.