What Is a Symbol?

Where Do We Get Symbols?

Symbols in Literature

Allegory

Practice Part A

Practice Part B

Symbolism and Allegory

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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]

Allegory—a story in which characters, setting, and actions stand for something beyond themselves, such as

• abstract ideas

• moral qualities

• historical figures or events

Allegory

Allegories

• can be read on two levels: literal and symbolic

• are often intended to teach a moral lesson or make a comment about goodness and vice

Allegory

Characters and places in allegories often have names that reveal their symbolic significance:

Characters Places

DeathVanityGood DeedsIgnorance

Celestial CityVanity FairHill of DifficultyValley of Fear

Allegory

What do you think Everyman, the main character of the allegory, stands for?

What comment about fellowship, beauty, and strength does this allegory make?

Allegory

Quick CheckOne day, Everyman is

summoned by Death to give an accounting of his life. Everyman ask his friends Fellowship, Beauty, Strength, and Good Deeds to go with him to tell Death that he has led a good life. Only Good Deeds stays with him to the end.

—summary of “Everyman”

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On a symbolic level, what does it mean that only Good Deeds stays with Everyman to the end?

Allegory

Quick CheckOne day, Everyman is

summoned by Death to give an accounting of his life. Everyman ask his friends Fellowship, Beauty, Strength, and Good Deeds to go with him to tell Death that he has led a good life. Only Good Deeds stays with him to the end.

—summary of “Everyman”

A. Think about the great number of symbols we’re surrounded by in everyday life. For starters, identify what the items below stand for. Then, see if you can explain the basis for the symbol—why is this symbol appropriate for what it stands for?

• A snake

• An eagle

• Spring

• An owl

• A white flag

Practice

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B. Here is a brief poem that works on two levels: a literal level and a symbolic level. A fen is a swampy place. What does the fen symbolize in this poem?

Practice

I May, I Might, I Must

If you will tell me why the fen

appears impassable, I then

will tell you why I think that I

can get across it if I try.

—Marianne Moore

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