Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
When Victor starts delivering the paper to strange Mr. Spiro, he gets something else besides the 95 cents that he's supposed to collect each week—a corner of a dollar bill with a new word on it. The words all begin with "s," which happens to be one of Victor's favorite letters (because he can pronounce it without too much trouble), and he finds himself seeing the words as a little puzzle to solve:
Mr. Spiro had something in mind besides just a money tip when he started giving me the pieces of a dollar with the words. I couldn't figure out what the two words had to do with each other but Rat would be home in two weeks and I would have all four pieces of the puzzle by then. I thought about us working on the puzzle together and how much fun that would be. (6.66)
When Victor finally puts together the complete dollar, the words written on it are student, servant, seller, and seeker. Although he still doesn't know exactly how the words connect to each other, Victor sees the complete dollar bill as a kind of reflection of all his possibilities—he can grow to be any one of the things written on the dollar bill, or better yet, all of these things.
Maybe Victor's like the dollar bill in that he has many parts that come together to form a whole person, and he doesn't have to be defined by any one word (like, say, another "s" word—stutterer). He can be all sorts of things, pulling together different parts of himself to form a complex picture that has value… just like the dollar bill does.