The Balloon by Donald Barthelme

I wish I had the time to really go through this one paragraph by paragraph. I can tell there is so much in the piece. The balloon starts off at Fourteenth Street in New York City. There is some personification involved with the balloon, “But experiencing a faint irritation at stopping...” The balloon continues through different sections of the city. At times children were jumping to catch it and then there were people who thought it was “interesting.” Hostility was mentioned and I wondered what type of balloon were we reading about? It evidentually was not for kids and it talked about the hidden gas valves. For some reason I am thinking we were in a recession at the time this was written. So is there a connection??? I think the “heavy feeling” might have been from the state of our country at that time. Could the protagonist be the people of NY and the antagonist be the economy???