What Is a Symbol?

Where Do We Get Symbols?

Symbols in Literature

Practice Part A

Practice Part B

Symbolism

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A symbol is an ordinary object, event, person, or animal to which we have attached a special meaning.

What Is a Symbol?

Public symbols

• have been inherited, or handed down over time

• show up in art and literature

Where Do We Get Symbols?

• are widely known

Note

What does each of these symbols stand for? Why do you think they have taken on the meanings they have?

justice luck love

Where Do We Get Symbols?

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Invented symbols

• come about when writers make a character, object, or event stand for some human concern

• sometimes become well known and gain the status of public symbol

Where Do We Get Symbols?

Writers use symbols to

• suggest layers of meaning that a simple, literal statement could never convey

• speak more powerfully to the reader’s emotions and imagination

• make their stories rich and memorable

Symbols in Literature

What might the cake symbolize in this passage?

What is your emotional response to the description of the cake?

Symbols in Literature

Quick CheckThe most prominent object was a long

table with a tablecloth spread on it. . . . An épergne or centrepiece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; . . . I saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it. . . .

“What do you think that is?” she asked me, again pointing with her stick; “that, where those cobwebs are?” . . .

“It’s a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!” from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens [End of Section]

lost love, disappointment, holding on to the past

What might the cake symbolize in this passage?

Symbols in Literature

Quick CheckThe most prominent object was a long

table with a tablecloth spread on it. . . . An épergne or centrepiece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; . . . I saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it. . . .

“What do you think that is?” she asked me, again pointing with her stick; “that, where those cobwebs are?” . . .

“It’s a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!” from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

It gives me the creeps. It makes me feel sorry for the woman.

What is your emotional response to the description of the cake?

Symbols in Literature

Quick CheckThe most prominent object was a long

table with a tablecloth spread on it. . . . An épergne or centrepiece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; . . . I saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it. . . .

“What do you think that is?” she asked me, again pointing with her stick; “that, where those cobwebs are?” . . .

“It’s a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!” from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Where Do We Get Symbols?

Note

Different cultures may attach different meanings to some symbols.

• For example, the symbolic meanings of colors are not universal.