what is the use of symbolism essay

Symbolism in Literature: What Symbolism Is, and How to Use It In Your Writing

Sean Glatch  |  November 5, 2023  |  4 Comments

Symbolism describes the use of concrete images to convey abstract ideas. Because this literary device is widely open to interpretation, and because many readers form different relationships to concrete objects, this is one of the more slippery elements of literature to both understand and convey to an audience. Nonetheless, understanding symbolism, and knowing what is a symbol, are crucial to writing good poetry and prose.

What makes symbolism particularly tricky is understanding how an image is being employed in the text. For example, fire can represent destruction and evil, but it can also represent regrowth and the cycles of life. So, this article demystifies the complexities of symbolism in literature. Along the way, we’ll look at symbolism examples in poetry and fiction, before moving towards how to represent abstract ideas in your work.

What is symbolism in literature, and how do you wield it? Let’s define this slippery concept.

Symbolism Contents

What is a Symbol?

Symbolism in literature, symbolism in poetry.

• Universal Symbolism: Does It Exist?

Wielding Symbolism in Your Writing

Symbolism definition: what is symbolism in literature.

Symbolism refers to the use of representational imagery : the writer employs an image with a deeper, non-literal meaning, for the purpose of conveying complex ideas.

In literature, symbolism is the use of a concrete image to represent an abstract idea.

For example, the heart is often employed as a symbol of love. Obviously, love is more complex and full-bodied—it doesn’t just sit in the chest—but we constantly refer to a loving person as “having a big heart,” or a person who lost their love as “heartbroken.”

Sometimes, a symbol is the stepping stone for an extended metaphor . If the heart represents love, what does it mean when a heart is iced over, or two hearts beat in the same chest, or someone has the heart of a deer? While a good symbol can certainly stand on its own, it also creates opportunities to play with ideas in a way that abstract language prevents us from doing.

That said, a symbol is not a metaphor. Symbolism uses a relevant image to convey a relevant idea, whereas a metaphor compares two seemingly unrelated items. Unlike metaphors and similes, symbolism employs a symbolic image repeatedly through the text, with the intent of being a central image and idea of the text.

The trickiest part of understanding symbolism in literature is knowing which images are symbols, and why. To answer this, we must first dive deeper into the images themselves. What is a symbol?

A symbol is an image whose figurative meaning is much deeper than its literal one. It is an object, often ordinary and commonplace, that has been imbued with extraordinary significance.

What is a symbol: an image whose figurative meaning is much deeper than its literal one.

Some symbols are culturally specific. An example of a symbol that varies by culture is that of a marriage proposal. While many countries use engagement rings as a symbol of being betrothed,  the people of Wales often uses “ lovespoons ” to signify one’s partnership. In Thailand, a marriage proposal might be signified by a thong mun —gifts made out of gold.

Other symbols are either more universal, or else easily inferred from the text. For example, in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a green light represents all that is unreachable to Jay Gatsby. He sees a green light on the other side of the sound, where his love interest, Daisy, lives. Not only is Daisy unreachable, but so is everything she and the green light represents: the (perceived) stability and decadence of the American Dream.

Perhaps there is also symbolism in the color green itself: it is the color of money, and the “go” color of stoplights. This last interpretation is certainly laden with irony , because chasing his dreams is exactly what kills Jay Gatsby.

Because the green light is so far away from Jay, and because he’s never able to touch it (or Daisy, for that matter), it obviously represents some sort of unreachability. Because this image recurs throughout the novel, it is a clear example of symbolism—so much so, that the green light has become nearly universally understood, to the point that Lorde has a song inspired by the symbol.

Symbolism Examples

Symbolism operates slightly differently in poetry than in prose, primarily because of the differences in word choice and length in poetry vs prose . A symbol tends to recur in prose, in such a way that it becomes a motif or builds towards a broader theme . Each recurrence of the symbol complicates the idea that the image represents.

Because poetry tends to be shorter, it also tends to employ symbols more economically. Symbolism in poetry may be harder to interpret or understand, as the poem does not provide as much context for the reader, and thus requires the reader to make more inferences and interpretations.

As such, we’ll look at symbolism examples differently in prose and poetry. The below symbolism examples come from published works of literature.

“Big Mother” by Anya Ow

Read this short story here, in Strange Horizons .

Central symbol: Big Mother, a mythical snakehead fish.

What it represents: The loss of childhood innocence.

Symbolism examples in the text: Catching snakehead fish seems to be a rite of passage into adulthood: the oldest boy is obsessed with catching them. What’s more, when an uncle finds out that the children have caught snakeheads, he trusts them with his favorite rod. When the oldest boy misses out on catching Big Mother, he becomes obsessed with capturing this symbol of adulthood. Then, when he does catch Big Mother, she ensnares him. The only way to ensure the oldest boy’s safety is to bargain their current lives for their future ones.

Analysis: Big Mother represents the complicated relationship people have to adulthood. The children all glorify her at first, but the eldest children realize the sacrifice they must make to save themselves from her wrath. This darkens the moods of the eldest children, as they come to understand the permanence of adulthood, the fragility of innocence. What at first seems mystical and fantastic about the real world is actually laden with terror.

The fact that the river is paved over further complicates this theme. While the characters are saved from the fate they sealed, they also catapult further into a world that replaces magic and mystery with the practical and mundane.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

You can read the full play here, from Project Gutenberg.

HAMLET: Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kiss’d I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chop-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that.

HAMLET: No, faith, not a jot. But to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it; as thus. Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel?

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. O, that that earth which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall t’expel the winter’s flaw. But soft! but soft! aside! Here comes the King. The Queen, the courtiers. Who is that they follow? And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken The corse they follow did with desperate hand Fordo it own life. ’Twas of some estate. Couch we awhile and mark.

Symbol: Yorick’s skull.

What it represents: The inherent meaninglessness of life.

Symbolism examples in the text: Although many symbols recur through their texts, this symbol occurs exactly once. In Act V Scene I, Prince Hamlet comes across the skull of Yorick, his former jester. This encounter occurs towards the end of the play, after Hamlet’s depression, nihilism, and helplessness have radically altered his perspective of the world.

Analysis: Hamlet’s contemplation of Yorick’s skull reveals his belief that our lives are inherently meaningless. That Yorick used to make people laugh matters little, because now he can make people laugh no more. He is fated to the same end that the likes of Alexander and Caesar were fated towards, too. Hamlet’s contemplation here is especially meaningful, given that he is trying to avenge his father’s murder. Because he is visited by his father’s ghost, Hamlet tries to believe that a person’s life can have meaning after death; but, his father cannot avenge himself, so what meaning is there left to have, unless we, the living, remind ourselves of it?

It is strange to have an important symbol occupy such a small space in as long a text as Hamlet. The importance of this symbol stems partially from its endurance in pop culture: Yorick’s skull has inspired many novels, poems, songs, and works of art. Additionally, it is a memento mori , or reminder of death, which is a prominent theme in European artwork in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The full text of Jane Eyre can be retrieved here, from Project Gutenberg.

Symbol: The Red Room.

What it represents: The childhood obstacles Jane must overcome to achieve a life of happiness and freedom.

Symbolism examples in the text: We encounter the Red Room in Chapter 2. Jane is locked inside the Red Room by her unfair aunt after Jane stands up for herself against John Reed, her cousin. The Red Room is also where Jane’s uncle died. Jane and her cousins believe that the room is haunted by this uncle, so when Jane is locked inside, she first focuses on the injustice of it all, but then becomes so consumed by fear, and by her belief that her uncle might rise up from the dead, that she blacks out. Jane references this episode several times later in the novel, often to reflect on her journey.

Analysis: The color red is no accident: it represents anger, passion, fear, and intensity. Jane experiences all of this when her aunt imprisons her at only ten years old. The obvious symbolism here is that pure, righteous Jane is imprisoned inside the angry, intense wrath of her unloving family, but the novel encourages us to explore this further. The Red Room represents Jane’s ambivalent relationships to adults: they are always authoritarian, always ready to punish, and always ready to trap Jane inside their own worst impulses.

One possible interpretation of the color red is that it represents period blood, and thus the transition from childhood to adulthood. Jane is forced to be an adult before she’s ready, maturely handling the emotions of other adults when she’s still an innocent child.

Madeleine Wood argues that the Red Room continues to affect Jane, because her relationships to adults as a child manifests itself in her relationships to men as an adult. Remember, the society Jane grew up in was heavily patriarchal: grown women had to always defer to men as authorities. Yet, Jane desires freedom more than anything else, both as a child and as an adult, so the institutions of marriage and the patriarchy fundamentally challenge her freedoms. When she reflects on the Red Room as an adult, it is always juxtaposed to her relationship with a man. She even thinks about the Red Room after walking out on Rochester, an important suitor of hers in the novel.

Only when Jane is comfortable with herself and confident in her freedom is she able to find love and happiness, thus overcoming the burden symbolized by the Red Room.

“My Heart Leaps Up” by William Wordsworth

Retrieved here, from Academy of American Poets . 

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

Here’s an example of poetry with symbolism in which the symbol is employed only once, but very effectively. The rainbow represents the kind of natural beauty that children are best at admiring. If you remember observing nature as a child, you might remember being moved by a rainbow, or by a forest, or a desert, or by any number of beautiful things that abound on this Earth. Wordsworth asserts that “The Child is father of the Man” precisely because children are inspired by natural beauty in a way that adults are not. We have much to learn from kids and their relationship to our planet, and as an adult, this poem’s speaker hope to worship this beauty—”bound each [day] to each [day] by natural piety.”

“City Lake” by Chelsea DesAutels

Retrieved here, from The Slowdown.

Almost dusk. Fishermen packing up their bait, a small girl singing there’s nothing in here nothing in here casting a yellow pole, glancing at her father. What is it they say about mercy? Five summers ago this lake took a child’s life. Four summers ago it saved mine, the way the willows stretch toward the water but never kiss it, how people laugh as they walk the concrete path or really have it out with someone they love. One spring the path teemed with baby frogs, so many flattened, so many jumping. I didn’t know a damn thing then. I thought I was waiting for something to happen. I stepped carefully over the dead frogs and around the live ones. What was I waiting for? Frogs to rain from the sky? A great love? The little girl spies a perch just outside her rod’s reach. She wants to wade in. She won’t catch the fish and even if she does it might be full of mercury. Still, I want her to roll up her jeans and step into the water, tell her it’s mercy, not mud, filling each impression her feet make. I’m not saying she should be grateful to be alive. I’m saying mercy is a big dark lake we’re all swimming in.

This poem tells you precisely what the central symbol represents: the lake symbolizes mercy. Yet, the two have no easy relationship, and the poem constantly complicates the concept of mercy itself. Rather than highlight the grace of mercy—how wonderful it is to be saved—this poem reminds us that mercy is just a form of chance: random with whom it saves and with whom it doesn’t. No matter how well the narrator “steps carefully” through the lake, she can never predict how and why anyone receives mercy.

“Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson

Retrieved here, from Poetry .

Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess – in the Ring – We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us – The Dews drew quivering and Chill – For only Gossamer, my Gown – My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground – The Roof was scarcely visible – The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses’ Heads Were toward Eternity –

This poem employs a lot of symbols, most notably in the third stanza. The images used each signify a different stage of life. The school represents childhood. The fields of gazing grain represent adulthood—grain is fertile, in its prime, and it “gazes” upwards towards the sky. The setting sun represents old age. Though each of these symbols are employed only once, they are certainly evocative in the context of Death personified, as the poem suggests each of us are on a horse drawn carriage towards the afterlife.

Universal Symbolism: Does it Exist?

The theorist Erich Fromm divides symbolism into three categories: conventional, accidental, and universal symbolism.

Conventional S ymbolism is closely related to concrete imagery. Essentially, it is the use of images which everyone in a particular language can understand. When I say “light bulb,” you imagine some sort of glass bulb with a filament inside. We might have different mental images, but we agree on the same meaning. This is a non-interpretive form of symbolism, and in semiotics , we’re essentially referring to the sign, signifier, and signified.

Accidental S ymbolism might be best described as specific to a certain person. We form relationships to objects all the time: some positive, some negative. A character might form a specific relationship to an object, and that relationship will continue to affect this character throughout the story. For example, let’s say your character won the lottery using a $5 bill they found on the street. They might assume that every time they find a $5, something lucky is about to happen, making that $5 bill a symbol of luck.

Finally, Universal Symbolism refers to images which, over time, have developed a symbolic meaning that we all instantly recognize. These symbols are understood across time and culture: a heart represents love, the sky represents limitlessness, and a fire represents power—or destruction, or rebirth, depending on how it’s employed.

However, don’t be misled by the word “universal”—it is better to see these categories as postmarks along a spectrum, as few, if any, symbols would actually be understood by every person in the world.

Additionally, don’t assume that “universal” is automatically better. Because these symbols are well understood, they are also often cliché . It is important to employ imagery in fresh, interesting ways, using the context of your work to discover new and surprising relationships between images and ideas. Often, using a poem or story to expand upon the accidental symbols (of your life or the lives of your characters) will result in more impactful imagery.

Lastly, you may be interested in the idea of the “ objective correlative .” An objective correlative is a device that makes an abstract idea concrete in the context of a piece of literature. An obvious example of this is the mirror in The Picture of Dorian Gray , which represents Dorian’s soul as it becomes corrupted by vanity. T. S. Eliot, who popularized the term, argues that a work of literature should arrange images and symbols precisely so that they evoke a certain meaning without telling us the meaning itself. It is, in essence, a way to exercise show, don’t tell .

Here’s some advice for employing symbolism in literature:

• Be concrete. Use images that are easy to visualize and grounded in everyday reality.
• Be specific. Show the reader exactly what the symbol looks like. The more physical detail you provide, the easier it is to explore the complexities of what your symbol represents.
• Prefer the accidental to the universal. There’s no problem with employing universal symbolism, but you should have at least one accidental symbol in your work, as it will often reveal the most about the story or poem you write.
• Be spontaneous. Don’t write with symbolism in mind, just employ imagery tactfully. Writers often don’t realize what their work means until after they’ve written and revised it; trying to muscle meaning into your work might limit the work’s possibilities.
• Don’t overthink it. There’s no “perfect image” to represent any particular idea. We all forge our own relationships to different objects. Sure, the heart can represent love. So can the dining table, a lightning strike, the stomach, the ocean, or a pair of shoes.

Make Your Writing Symbolic at Writers.com

Whether you write poetry or prose, the instructors at Writers.com are masters of imagery and symbolism. Receive the benefits of focused feedback and a friendly writing community in any of our upcoming creative writing classes .

Sean Glatch

this is great information – I shared it with my Facebook group – The Fringe 999 – we emerging artist and are always looking for information like this – thank you

Thank you, Laura! I’m glad you found this article helpful. Happy writing!

Very educational and enlightened. I learned a lot from the article. Thank you.

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Definition of Symbolism

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

Common Examples of Symbolism in Everyday Life

Everyday words, objects, and even concepts often have more than a single meaning. Across time, certain aspects of everyday life and experience evolve in meaning and associated significance, making them symbols of something besides what they actually are. Here are some common examples of symbolism in everyday life:

Examples of Types of Symbolism and Their Effects

Here are some examples of types of symbolism and their effects:

Famous Examples of Symbolism in Movies

Difference between symbolism and motif, examples of symbolism in literature, example 1:  the glass menagerie  (tennessee williams).

Yes, movies! Look at them — All of those glamorous people — having adventures — hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America , while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there’s a war. That’s when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone’s dish, not only Gable’s! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves — Goody, goody! — It’s our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island — to make a safari — to be exotic, far-off!

In Williams’s play , Tom’s character frequently goes to the movies to escape the monotony and pressure of his life at home with his mother and sister. Therefore, movies offer Tom both a literal and figurative escape from his home, though it is a passive escape in darkness with no true experience of adventure. The movies symbolize Tom’s dreams and fantasies as well as their unattainability and manufactured reality. In this passage, Williams also makes artistic and ironic use of the word “movies” in that the act of going to the movies actually makes Tom feel more stagnant, stuck, and unmoving.

Example 2:  The Lesson  (Toni Cade Bambara)

Miss Moore lines us up in front of the mailbox where we started from, seem like years ago, and I got a headache for thinkin so hard. And we lean all over each other so we can hold up under the draggy ass lecture she always finishes us off with at the end before we thank her for borin us to tears. But she just looks at us like she readin tea leaves. Finally she say, “Well, what did you think of F.A.0. Schwarz?” Rosie Giraffe mumbles, “White folks crazy.”

In Bambara’s short story , the famous New York City toy store F.A.O. Schwarz is a symbol for economic wealth and frivolous spending. Miss Moore’s character, by bringing a group of underprivileged black kids to the toy store, also wants F.A.O. Schwarz to be viewed as a symbol of systemic racial and social division in America as well as monetary separation. By exposing this group of kids to such an outrageously expensive toy store, Miss Moore intends to teach them a lesson and instill a deeper concept of failed American opportunity and equality through the symbolism of F.A.O. Schwarz.

Example 3:  The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night . Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

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What Is Symbolism and How to Use It in Your Writing

If you’re a reader, you’ve encountered symbolism. Symbolism is a literary device in which a writer uses one thing—like an object, idea, or color—to represent another. 

Writers of all kinds use symbolism, and you can find examples of symbols in fiction, poetry, theater, creative nonfiction, graphic novels, and even journalism. It’s a way to deepen the meaning of a story, help the reader make associations, and nod to a shared culture. 

In this article, we’ll address what symbolism is, how to identify a symbol, and how to use it in your writing to create stronger, more vivid, and more meaningful stories. 

What is symbolism?

In literature, a symbol is a thing that stands for or represents something else. A symbol might be an object, a mark, an image, a character, a name, or a place—pretty much anything can serve as a symbol.  

Symbolism is a literary device that uses symbols to imbue meaning in a story. 

For example, in Sylvia Plath’s famous poem, “ The Colossus ,” the colossal statue the speaker constructs (the colossus) is a symbol of the poet’s relationship with her father, who died when she was a child, and her husband, from whom she had recently separated when the poem was written. 

You encounter symbolism in every art form, including painting, film and TV, sculpture, music, photography, and drama. You also see and recognize symbols in everyday life. A heart can be a symbol of love or devotion, flowers can symbolize an apology, the letter x might symbolize danger, a dog might symbolize companionship, or a scar might symbolize someone’s painful past.

Why use symbolism in your writing

Symbolism is like a shortcut to deeper meaning, and symbols can make a story more interesting to readers. Symbols can be very small elements of a story, like a wedding ring that symbolizes commitment (or a lost wedding ring that symbolizes infidelity), or they can even be the primary plot driver, like a natural disaster that symbolizes the global threat of climate change.

Symbols can also help your readers make associations. For example, if you want your reader to identify the villains in your story before they reveal their evil sides through their behavior, you could mark each with a symbol, like a scar, a specific article of clothing, an accent, or a name.

Symbols can be used to foreshadow events. Let’s say you want to signal to the reader that danger is on the way. You might symbolize that approaching danger with a storm, an argument, or an illness.

When repeated, symbols can become motifs. For example, if your characters fight with each other just before a tragedy strikes, every time tragedy strikes, then an argument becomes shorthand for something bad is on the way . In this case, the symbol of the argument is a motif that foreshadows tragedy. 

How to identify a symbol in literature

Symbolism relies on shared cultural understanding, and context is often important because symbols vary by culture, religion, time period, tradition, location, and even writing form. For example:

• In Irish culture, the harp is a symbol of national identity and pride. Within ancient Greek art, however, the harp is used as a symbol of wisdom.
• In the United States and many western European countries, purity is commonly symbolized by the color white. But in India, red is the color of purity. 
• In some contexts, the letter x can symbolize incorrectness or an error, in other contexts it can stand for an unknown quantity. 
• In western literary tradition, the color green can symbolize envy, but it can also symbolize luck, or it can symbolize wealth, or it can symbolize fertility and new growth.

Interpreting symbols

When interpreting symbols, consider the context in which the author is writing, their time period, and their artistic tradition. Here are some questions you might ask yourself:

• Who is the writer and what might their point of view be? When and where did they live? What kind of things did they write about?
• What is the point of view of the narrator? Does that differ from the author’s point of view or cultural context?
• Does the symbol reappear? In what context? Does it change?
• Is the symbol used by or associated with the protagonist or the antagonist?
• Who is the character that uses or interacts with the symbol? What is their point of view? Do you know what their goals are? What effect does the symbol have? How do they react?
• Following the appearance of the symbol, does the reader learn something new about the story or its characters? 

Types of symbolism

Symbolism enriches a narrative by weaving deeper meanings into the fabric of a story. It can be broadly categorized into two types: universal and contextual symbolism, each playing a unique role in storytelling.

Universal Symbolism refers to symbols that carry widely recognized meanings across different cultures and historical periods. These symbols tap into the collective unconscious, a term popularized by Carl Jung , suggesting that certain symbols have a common psychological resonance with people around the world.

For instance, the use of water as a symbol typically represents life, purification, and renewal, regardless of the reader’s cultural background. Similarly, the image of a serpent often evokes notions of danger, sin, or wisdom. These symbols are powerful because they are rooted in human experience and shared beliefs, making them accessible and impactful to a broad audience.

Contextual Symbolism , on the other hand, is specific to the setting, culture, or context of the story itself. These symbols might not be immediately recognizable to all readers but hold significant meaning within a particular narrative or amongst a specific group of people.

For example, a silver locket in a story might symbolize a family’s heritage and secrets in one book, while in another, it could represent unrequited love or loss.

Contextual symbols are shaped by the characters’ experiences, the time period, and the geographical or social backdrop against which a story unfolds. They enrich the narrative by adding a layer of depth that can be fully appreciated only within the context of the story.

Both types of symbolism are crucial in literature as they provide a way to express complex themes and emotions subtly and powerfully. While universal symbols connect a story to common human experiences, contextual symbols offer a deep dive into the specificities of the tale’s environment and characters, inviting readers to immerse themselves fully into the world the author has crafted.

By understanding and utilizing both universal and contextual symbolism, writers can create rich, layered narratives that resonate on multiple levels and leave a lasting impact on the reader.

What’s the difference between a symbol and a motif?

In literature, symbols and motifs are closely related. A motif is an idea or element that is repeated in a story for meaning.

Therefore, a symbol can become a motif if it reappears throughout a text. 

For example, one character might give another a bouquet of flowers to symbolize contrition for some wrong committed. Those flowers might become a motif if the character encounters flowers every time they realize they have done something wrong. 

If a symbol appears only once or twice in a story, then it’s not a motif. 

10 examples of symbols in literature

Every type of art uses symbolism in some way, and you can find symbols in every form of writing too. Here are some examples you might have encountered in literature.

• Edgar Allen Poe’s raven

One of the most famous examples of symbolism in western poetry is the raven in Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “ The Raven .” The raven’s persistent tapping at the speaker’s door represents his constant and long-lasting grief over the death of the beloved Lenore. 

• The act of sewing in The Color Purple

In Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple, sewing is a symbol of the collective power of women and what they can accomplish when they work together toward a common and beautiful goal—the creative freedom and economic independence.

• The black box in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”

In Shirley Jackson’s most famous short story, the black box represents the villagers’ sinister adherence to the lottery itself. Villagers aren’t entirely sure of the origins or purpose of the black box, just like they aren’t sure of the origins or purpose of the murderous lottery, yet it continues.

• Cigarettes in Persepolis

In Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis , the cigarettes that the teenage Marjane smokes are a symbol of her rebellion against her mother and against the expectations of culture on young women.

• The plant in A Raisin in the Sun

In Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun , Mama’s plant is a symbol of her persistent love and affection for her family, specifically her children. She continues to care for the plant, just as she does for her children, despite the fact that she feels that she doesn’t always have enough to give. 

• Bound feet in The Warrior Woman

In The Warrior Woman by Maxine Hong Kingston, bound feet are a symbol of the restrictions placed on Chinese women and the cultural control over their bodies. 

• Fences in August Wilson’s Fences

Fences play a central role in August Wilson’s play Fences , of course. This is a symbol that serves many purposes. To Rose, a fence around the backyard represents her desire to keep her family close, but to Bono, a fence is a tool to keep people away. 

• The color blue in Joan Didion’s Blue Nights

In Joan Didion’s memoir Blue Nights , which chronicles the death of her daughter Quintana, the writer describes the blue light in the evening hours of summer, a symbol of her daughter’s departure. 

• The scarlet letter

Perhaps one of the most famous symbols in the western literary canon is the scarlet letter in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s eponymous novel. Hester Prynne is marked with the red letter A, a symbol that represents the way the community sees her, as an adulterer. By the end of the story, however, the letter becomes a symbol of Hester’s independence and freedom, even her virtue.

• Trees in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 

In Betty Smith’s novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn , trees and their ability to grow in harsh conditions, through city concrete, without sunlight, in terrible heat, represents the tenacity and resilience of the book’s main character Francie as well as her family and neighbors who live in the Brooklyn tenements. 

How to use symbolism in writing

If you’re new to using symbolism in your writing, objects and items are good places to start. 

Because symbolism requires some level of shared cultural understanding, consider your audience and choose something you believe they might recognize or associate with the idea you want to convey, but it’s OK if not everyone recognizes the symbol(s) you choose to employ in your writing. 

Let’s explore how symbolism might operate in a short story.

Imagine you’re writing about a character who is grieving the death of a family member. Instead of writing, “Rahim decided that he while he grieved the loss of his father, he would spend time thinking about their relationship, and so he planted a beautiful garden,” you could write, “When Rahim learned that his father had died, he could think of only one thing to do: plant a garden.”

The garden is a symbol of Rahim’s desire to express his grief in a physical way, and rather than telling the reader what he desires, as a writer you can deepen your story by showing that desire in the form of an abundant garden. When we learn that Rahim’s father was a gardener too, the garden also comes to symbolize the relationship between father and son.

Symbols can also evolve and drive the plot. For example, perhaps during the grieving process, Rahim finally acknowledges and comes to terms with how difficult it was to relate to his father when he was alive, and maybe their relationship was even hostile at times. Because the garden is a symbol of their relationship, the plants might fail to thrive and Rahim must struggle to keep the garden alive and continue grieving his father.

As a writer, you have a lot of power to manipulate your symbols. In the case of Rahim and his garden, consider how you might end the story: Does Rahim become a lifelong gardener or does he abandon the work after a summer of abundant growth? What is the significance of the central character’s relationship with the symbol, and how does it affect the meaning of the story?

The power of this symbol is that readers will enjoy the freedom to interpret the meaning of the garden rather than being told what it means. 

Paying attention to context

Even if there is a shared cultural context, symbols can have multiple interpretations. When writing, keep in mind the different ways your audience might interpret the symbol. 

Because the color green might symbolize envy or it might symbolize new growth, the way you employ green in the story will affect its significance.

Using symbols to establish irony

When using symbols in your writing, you don’t have to go with the obvious.

You can use symbolism to create irony or establish new worlds and paradigms. For example, because the color red is often a symbol of danger, you might choose to create a world in which a deep red sky signifies a peaceful land instead of one in peril. 

You can also use symbols for contrast. In one scene flowers may represent blossoming love, when one character gives flowers to another. In another scene, they may represent death or grief as one character lays flowers on a grave.

Ready to try out using some symbolism? Use one of our 500 writing prompts to get started!

Note: This post was updated on 4/26/2024

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2 comments on “ what is symbolism and how to use it in your writing ”.

I think sometimes symbolism jusst occurs natuarally like the way of https://rocketbotroyale.com/geometry-dash-breeze

Loved this post! Symbolism is such a powerful tool in writing, and it’s great to see tips on how to use it effectively. I’ll definitely be applying these strategies to my own writing. Thanks for sharing!

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Symbolism Definition

What is symbolism? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

Symbolism is a literary device in which a writer uses one thing—usually a physical object or phenomenon—to represent something more abstract. A strong symbol usually shares a set of key characteristics with whatever it is meant to symbolize, or is related to it in some other way. Characters and events can also be symbolic. A famous example of a symbol in literature occurs in To Kill a Mockingbird , when Atticus tells his children Jem and Scout that it's a sin to kill a mockingbird because mockingbirds cause no harm to anyone; they just sing. Because of these traits, mockingbirds in the novel symbolize innocence and beauty, while killing a mockingbird symbolizes an act of senseless cruelty.

Some additional key details about symbolism:

• Symbolism can be very subtle, so it isn't always easy to identify or understand.
• It can sometimes be difficult to say whether an author intended for something to be symbolic or not.
• Symbolism allows writers to convey things to their readers poetically or indirectly rather than having to say them outright, which can make texts seem more nuanced and complex.

Symbolism Pronunciation

Here's how to pronounce symbolism: sim -buh-liz-uhm

Types of Symbolism

A symbol can be a physical object, a character, or an event. Here's a brief overview of how each type of symbolism works:

• Symbolism through physical objects: Most often, physical objects are used to symbolize an idea or concept, as a way of pointing the reader towards some of the basic themes that a work is dealing with. For example, a poet might write a poem about a flower dancing in the wind in order to convey a sense of innocence, harmony with nature, or sheer happiness.
• Symbolism through characters: Sometimes, characters themselves can serve as symbols—of a particular virtue or vice, or of a political ideology. For example, in Edmund Spenser's famous allegorical poem, The Faeirie Queene , the female knight Britomart is a symbol of the values of chastity and restraint, traits which many 16th-century readers held in high esteem.
• Symbolism through events: Events can also be symbolic. For example, while a character's long, wild hair might symbolize a period of youth or innocence, a scene in which the character chops off his or her long hair might symbolize a loss of innocence—or the sacrifices people have to make in the process of becoming a mature adult with responsibilities. While the act of cutting off the hair is neither an object nor a character, but it would still be an example of symbolism.

Identifying Symbolism

Writers employ a wide variety of symbols to deepen the meaning of their work. Some symbols, though, are much easier to identify than others. It's worth recognizing the ways that some symbols can be obvious, while others might be less so. For example, sea glass might be used as a fairly obvious symbol in one text, and a more subtle symbol in another:

• Sea glass as an obvious symbol: If a character in a story gives her son a piece of sea glass just before she dies, and the son then puts the sea glass on a necklace and wears it every day, that's a pretty clear example of something being symbolic: the sea glass represents the son's relationship with his mother, his grief at her passing, or perhaps even the more general concept of loss. In this example, the author might choose to describe how the son plays with his necklace obsessively in order to convey his ever present grief at the loss of his mother—instead of having to state it outright.
• Sea glass as a less-obvious symbol: If a character in a story delivers a monologue about sea glass in which they explain how something sharp and broken (a shard of glass) becomes smooth and beautiful only through years of being tossed about on the ocean's currents, it might over the course of the story come to be symbolic for the process of growing up or recovering from trauma—but not every reader will necessarily pick up on the symbolism. In this case, sea glass would be an example of a symbol that might be harder to identify as a symbol within the context of the story.

Is a Symbol Purposeful or Not?

In some cases, particularly when a symbol is subtle, it's not always even clear whether the author's use of symbolism is intentional, or whether the reader is supplying their own meaning of the text by "reading into" something as a symbol. That isn't a problem, though. In fact, it's one of the beautiful things about symbolism: whether symbolism can be said to be present in a text has as much to do with the reader's interpretation as the writer's intentions.

Symbol vs. Metaphor

At first glance, symbolism and metaphor can be difficult to distinguish from one another—both devices imbue a text with meaning beyond its literal sense, and both use one thing to represent something else. However, there are a few key differences between metaphor and symbolism:

• Metaphors compare two different things by stating that one thing is the other (e.g., your eyes are heaven). This doesn't happen in symbolism, where the relationship between a symbol and what it represents is not stated explicitly and one thing is not said to be the other thing. Instead, a symbol stands for or represents something else.
• Whereas a metaphor is used to compare one thing to another based on shared characteristics, symbols can but don't need to have any characteristics in common with what they represent. For instance, Annie Proulx's story Brokeback Mountain ends with one character taking in the smell of a shirt that was once worn by his lost love. The shirt doesn't have any characteristics in common with the lover—it symbolizes him only insofar as it once belonged to him.

Symbolism and Allegory

An allegory is a work that conveys a moral through the use of symbolic characters and events. Not every work that incorporates symbols is an allegory; rather, an allegory is a story in which the majority of characters and plot developments serve as symbols for something else, or in which the entire storyline is symbolic of a broader phenomenon in society.

For example, the characters in Edmund Spenser's allegorical poem The Faerie Queene are not very complex or deep characters: they're meant to embody virtues or ideas more than they are meant to resemble real people. By contrast, Hester Prynne (the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's highly symbolic novel, The Scarlet Letter ) exhibits a great deal of complexity and individuality as a character beyond whatever she may symbolize, so it doesn't really make sense to say that The Scarlet Letter is an allegory about adultery; rather, it's a novel that is literally about adultery that has symbolic aspects. In short, all allegories are highly symbolic, but not all symbolic writing is allegorical.

Symbolism Examples

Symbolism is very common is all sorts of narrative literature, poetry, film, and even speeches.

Examples of Symbolism in Literature

Authors frequently incorporate symbolism into their work, because symbols engage readers on an emotional level and succinctly convey large and complex ideas.

Symbolism in Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain"

The following passage from Annie Proulx's short story "Brokeback Mountain" describes a character named Ennis's visit to the childhood home of a lost lover named Jack. There, Ennis finds an old shirt of his nestled inside of one of Jack's shirts.

At the north end of the closet a tiny jog in the wall made a slight hiding place and here, stiff with long suspension from a nail, hung a shirt. He lifted it off the nail. Jack’s old shirt from Brokeback days. The dried blood on the sleeve was his own blood, a gushing nosebleed on the last afternoon on the mountain when Jack, in their contortionistic grappling and wrestling, had slammed Ennis’s nose hard with his knee. He had stanched the blood, which was everywhere, all over both of them, with his shirtsleeve, but the stanching hadn’t held, because Ennis had suddenly swung from the deck and laid the ministering angel out in the wild columbine, wings folded. The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack’s sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he’d thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack’s own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack, but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.

Proulx's description of the shirts sounds like it could be a description of the feeling of intimacy shared between lovers: she writes that they are "like two skins, one inside the other, two in one." The shirts symbolize the love the two men shared, but Proulx avoids having to explain Ennis's feelings directly by using symbolism in her description of the shirts, instead.

Symbolism in Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias "

In the sonnet "Ozymandias," Shelley uses the story of an encounter with a decaying monument to illustrate the destructive power of nature, the fleetingness of man's political accomplishments, and the longevity of art.

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The symbolism in Shelley's poem transforms the half-sunken monument into a powerful representation of the passage of time. The poem reminds readers that natural forces will put an end to the reign of all empires and the lives of every person, whether king or commoner. In the final lines, the poem juxtaposes two very different symbols: the fallen statue, greatly reduced from its former size, and the huge, barren, and unchanging desert. The statue of Ozymandias is therefore symbolic of man's mortality and smallness in the face time and nature.

Symbolism in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

In Chapter Ten of I nvisible Man , the book's protagonist goes to work at the Liberty Paints Factory—the maker of a paint "so white you can paint a chunk of coal and you'd have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn't white clear through"—where he is surprised to learn that the recipe for the brilliant white paint actually calls for the addition of a few drops of black paint. The symbolism of the black paint disappearing into the white is a direct reference to the "invisibility" of black people in America—one of the major themes of Ellison's book.

"The idea is to open each bucket and put in ten drops of this stuff," he said. "Then you stir it 'til it disappears. After it's mixed you take this brush and paint out a sample on one of these." He produced a number of small rectangular boards and a small brush from his jacket pocket. "You understand?" "Yes, sir." But when I looked into the white graduate I hesitated; the liquid inside was dead black. Was he trying to kid me?

Symbolism in Film

Filmmakers often endow particular objects with emotional significance. These visual symbols may shed light on a character's motivations or play an important role later on in the film.

Symbolism in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane

In the closing scene of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane , the camera pans to a sled with the word "Rosebud" printed on it—the same word that is uttered by the newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane on his deathbed. The movie itself portrays Kane's ruthless efforts to consolidate power in his industry. Yet in his final moments, he recalls the sled associated with the happier days of his youth. The "Rosebud" sled can be described as a symbol of Kane's youthful innocence and idealism, of which he lost sight in his pursuit of power. The sled is one of the most famous symbols in all of film.

Symbolism In Speeches

Orators often turn to symbolism for the same reasons writers do—symbols can add emotional weight to a speech and can stand-in for broad themes and central parts of their argument.

Symbolism in John F. Kennedy's 1961 Inaugural Address

In the opening lines of his 1961 inaugural address , President Kennedy claims that his inauguration is the symbol of a new era in American history, defined by both reverence for the past and innovation in the years to come:

We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom—symbolizing an end as well as a beginning—signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forbears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.

Here, President Kennedy argues on behalf of the symbolic significance of his election, suggesting that his Inauguration Day stands for the progress in America that is soon to come. Though it's not an especially subtle use of symbolism, Kennedy's assertion that his first day in office represents the first of many steps forward for America likely had a considerable emotional impact on his audience.

Symbolism in Barack Obama's Speech on the 50th Anniversary of the Selma Marches

In his speech on the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches , President Obama casts the Edmund Pettus Bridge (in Selma, Alabama) as a symbol of American progress and resilience.

The American instinct that led these young men and women to pick up the torch and cross this bridge is the same instinct that moved patriots to choose revolution over tyranny. It’s the same instinct that drew immigrants from across oceans and the Rio Grande; the same instinct that led women to reach for the ballot and workers to organize against an unjust status quo; the same instinct that led us to plant a flag at Iwo Jima and on the surface of the Moon.

In this example, President Obama paid tribute to the activists who were beaten brutally by state troopers after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge during a 1965 demonstration in Selma, Alabama. Likening their perseverance in the face of police brutality to other prominent examples of American resistance, such as the American Revolution, Obama claims that the demonstrators symbolize a quintessential American trait: a commitment to securing and protecting personal freedom. Thus, in Obama's speech, crossing the bridge can be said to function as a symbol of the long struggle for civil rights.

Why Do Writers Use Symbolism?

It's hard to find a work of literature that lacks any kind of symbolism. Symbolism is an important literary device for creating complex narratives because it enables writers to convey important information without having to state things directly. In addition, the use of symbolism is widespread because it can:

• Help readers visualize complex concepts and central themes, and track their development.
• Afford writers the opportunity to communicate big ideas efficiently and artfully.
• Invite readers to interpret a text independently, rather than be directly told what the author means.
• Add emotional weight to a text.
• Conceal themes that are too controversial to state openly.
• Imply change or growth in characters or themes through shifts in the way that characters interact with particular symbols, or ways in which the symbols themselves change over time.

Other Helpful Symbolism Resources

• The Wikipedia Page on Symbols : A rather theoretical account of symbolism, which delves into competing definitions of the term that might be more complicated or detailed than is necessary for many readers. Still, the page demonstrates just how pervasive symbolism is in language and thought.
• Cracked's List of 7 Films With Symbolism You Didn't Notice : Though the author's speculations verge on conspiracy theories at times, at its best, the list demonstrates how artists might use symbols to bury risqué themes in works for popular consumption.
• The HyperTexts Page on The Best Symbols in Poetry and Literature : The explanations here aren't especially in-depth—certainly not as sophisticated as the symbols they discuss. Still, this is useful as a survey of poems by major writers with examples of concrete, object-based symbolism.

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What Is Symbolism? Definition and Examples

Answer: Symbolism is the use of real-world objects to represent abstract ideas. It takes easy-to-understand ideas and objects and uses them to communicate deeper concepts beyond their literal meaning.

Symbolism is one of the most popular literary devices. We encounter symbolism constantly, but it’s not always easy to identify or implement into one's own writing.

In this post, we’ll dive into symbolism and the effects it can create in a story — along with some classic symbolism examples you’re bound to recognize.

Symbolism is the expression of ideas through imagery

Symbolism tends to work best with striking imagery. This is why symbolism often involves bold colors, eye-catching items, dramatic events, and so on; the stronger the image, the clearer the idea behind it.

Filmmakers frequently take advantage of this, crafting colorful, compelling visuals that audiences instantly clock as symbolism. While writers must take a subtler approach, that doesn’t mean textual symbolism is weaker than visual symbolism — indeed, when gifted with masterful description, a reader’s imagination can yield the most powerful imagery of all.

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Strong imagery doesn’t always equal symbolism. Sometimes a vivid scene is just a plot point that moves the story along without representing anything deeper. That said, strong imagery usually means you’ve got a symbol on your hands — as in the example below.

Example: Water and rebirth in Beloved

A fully dressed woman walked out of the water. She barely gained the dry bank of the stream before she sat down and leaned against a mulberry tree. All day and all night she sat there, her head resting on the trunk in a position abandoned enough to crack the brim in her straw hat. Everything hurt but her lungs most of all.

The fifth chapter of Beloved begins with Beloved's rebirth after her mother, Sethe, was forced to kill her as a baby. While the water itself is the symbol, it’s the image of Beloved that hits hardest: this portrait of a young woman whose lungs sting with every breath, who can't move for an entire day.

Beloved is full of striking imagery like this, but this scene is a particularly nuanced example. With the realization that she is Sethe’s lost daughter, the scene takes on even greater meaning — the water symbolizes not just Beloved’s rebirth, but the pain of it, invoking the trauma of her past.

It's a way to underline important themes

To work meaningfully in a story, a symbol can’t just represent any idea. It also needs to relate to the story’s recurring themes !

Take the age-old symbols of light and darkness. If you were writing an epic battle between two sides, you might connect one side to light and the other to darkness to show who’s good and who’s bad — or you could swap them to subvert the trope. What you wouldn’t want to do is insert imagery of darkness and light in a story that has nothing to do with good and evil.

Luckily for writers, once you know which idea(s) you want to tackle , suitable symbols should follow. And luckily for readers, writers almost never include random symbols that don’t relate to their work’s themes!

If you recognize a symbol, even if you’re not sure how to decipher it, you can trust that it’s important — as in the example below.

Example: Mockingbirds and innocence in To Kill a Mockingbird

Atticus said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

Though Atticus first brings it up in the passage above, the mockingbird symbolizes more than Jem's childhood innocence. It’s a symbol for all innocence, and clearly connects to the character of Tom Robinson: a Black man falsely accused of assaulting a white woman.

By extension, the phrase “to kill a mockingbird” relates to the immorality of hurting an innocent creature. In the book, the Ewells symbolically kill the mockingbird of Tom Robinson with their lies, as does the racist jury that convicts him.

Of course, when Tom is shot and killed by a prison guard, we see that for a Black man in America, murder is rarely just metaphorical. It’s a wrenching yet undeniably powerful sequence of events — and an excellent case study in how such symbols can connect to overarching themes.

A poetic way to “show, don’t tell”

Symbolism can also be used to show rather than tell. For those unfamiliar with this principle, it encourages subtle yet revealing descriptions rather than laying out information more plainly .

For example: “Allie was nervous during the test” is a telling statement. It gets the point across clearly and immediately, and even demonstrates how telling is useful when the author has to knock out some important (but perhaps dry) information . But telling sentences don’t really engage the reader, and can come across as boring.

“Showing” the same information is much more interesting: “Allie fiddled with her pencil, tapping it against the tabletop. Her eyes darted up to the clock and back down again. She felt her palms sweating and gripped the pencil harder.” This lets us know what Allie is experiencing without quite labeling it, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions.

Symbolism adds yet another, more intriguing layer to this tactic. While all symbols help writers “show don’t tell” their ideas, some symbols are especially incisive, as in the following example.

Example: Blood and guilt in Macbeth

Out, damned spot! Out, I say! — One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky! — Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? — Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.

One of the most memorable scenes in Macbeth is Lady Macbeth’s bout of sleepwalking in Act 5, accompanied by her frenzied speech. “Out, damned spot!” she cries, scrubbing at her hands as if they were stained with blood — despite the fact that she has not killed anyone herself.

If anything, though, this makes the “blood” into an even more powerful symbol; Lady Macbeth's guilt is so extreme that this vision still haunts her. Of course, she doesn’t say “I feel guilty.” Shakespeare makes a much more compelling case by showing her descent into blood-fueled paranoia… ironically, the same force that drove her and Macbeth to murder.

It can enhance a story's emotional resonance

As you’ve probably gathered, the best symbols evoke both an intellectual and an emotional response. We feel sorrow over Beloved’s painful rebirth; desperately angry at the destruction of Tom Robinson; a mixture of satisfaction, pity, and fear for Lady Macbeth’s guilt.

These responses tend to arise naturally, but storytellers can also intentionally make their symbols more resonant. For instance, say you wanted to symbolize childhood in a scene. You could have your main character walk by a park and hear children playing… or you could have them stumble upon an old, worn teddy bear with its stuffing falling out.

The more innate emotional pull an image has, the more strongly readers will feel about what it represents. Whether you’re trying to elicit sublime happiness or devastating sadness, a well-placed symbol could be the key.

Example: Food and passion in Like Water for Chocolate

Tita's blood and the roses from Pedro proved quite an explosive combination. [...] Gertrudis began to feel an intense heat pulsing through her limbs. An itch in the center of her body kept her from sitting properly in her chair.   She began to sweat, imagining herself on horseback with her arms clasped around one of Poncho Villa's men: the one she had seen in the village plaza the week before, smelling of sweat and mud, of dawns that brought uncertainty and danger, smelling of life and of death.

What better way to show emotional resonance than with a story about baking feelings into food? The symbolism in Like Water for Chocolate is admittedly quite evident; its magical realist approach means that we can see clearly which emotion each dish represents.

But sometimes the most obvious symbols have the greatest emotional impact. This is certainly true of the scene in which Tita’s sister, Gertrudis, is consumed by lust after eating quail with rose petal sauce — a meal infused with Tita’s erotic thoughts of her other sister’s husband, Pedro. 

This symbol is particularly potent given that Pedro brought Tita the roses in the first place. Tita effectively pours all her sexual frustration into the meal, and in the next breathless scene, we feel her love and lust for Pedro almost as powerfully as Gertrudis does.

And it can make the most obscure story relateable.

Finally, keep in mind that most symbols in literature are universal. Indeed, reviewing our examples, each author uses an intuitive association (water with rebirth, blood with guilt, etc.) to coax readers in the right direction.

Sure, some of the more generic symbols — like the color red rather than the specific image of blood — may represent multiple, sometimes conflicting ideas in different works. And as noted in the light vs. darkness example, there’s always the possibility of subversion.

But most of the time, what you intuit is what you get! At the end of the day, interpreting and even implementing symbols isn’t all that complicated. Go with your gut, and when in doubt, remember you can always return to the classics for confirmation.

Example: Nature and wildness in Wuthering Heights (and others)

My landlord halloed for me to stop ere I reached the bottom of the garden, and offered to accompany me across the moor. It was well he did, for the whole hill-back was one billowy, white ocean; the swells and falls not indicating corresponding rises and depressions in the ground: many pits, at least, were filled to a level; and entire ranges of mounds, the refuse of the quarries, blotted from the chart which my yesterday's walk left pictured in my mind.

Speaking of the classics, let’s look at our last example: nature and wildness in Wuthering Heights . This one is so well-known that it even features in an episode of Friends — Phoebe noting that the story is set “on these really creepy moors,” which symbolize “the wildness of Heathcliff’s character.”

But Wuthering Heights isn’t the only story to relate natural wilderness to human turmoil and ferality. The Scarlet Letter, published a few years later, implies a similar connection with Hester’s daughter Pearl — forced to live near the woods on the edge of town, Pearl becomes increasingly unruly. A better-known example might be Lord of the Flies : the longer the boys remain on the island, the more primitive they become.

This is one of symbolism’s best qualities: creators can build upon earlier works to develop symbols and make them even more powerful. Which is exactly why the greatest symbols only become richer over time!

On that note, we hope this guide has helped you better understand symbolism in literature — to both identify symbols in future reading and use them more effectively in your own work. No matter what the symbols in question are, you’ll have all the tools you need to work with them. (Then again, just to be safe, steer clear of those creepy moors.)

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What Is Symbolism? Reviewing Examples in Literature

Have you ever wondered how to make your essay entertaining and interesting by changing only a few lines? Symbolism is a great tool to improve your paper in a sophisticated way. In this article, we will introduce you to symbolism and ways to use it in your own writing effectively. Let's go deeper with our professional essay writers .

What Is Symbolism?

Symbolism is a tool used to give objects a deeper meaning and a different quality with the use of a symbol. Symbols are deeply rooted in our speech without us noticing because they enhance our conversation, make sentences elaborate and exemplify things we talk about more vividly.

For example: A dove is a symbol of peace, a black cat signifies bad luck, and a white flag means a peace offering.

Most symbols in custom essay writing services are universal and can be understood by people from different countries and backgrounds. However, some of them are culturally specific and one should be careful in order not to offend anyone or be misunderstood.

How Symbolism Is Used in Literature

Certain objects and terms signify things which are different from their literal sense. Usually, symbolism is used in order to give deeper and more significant meaning to events, objects and characters throughout the text, unify them, and give certain connotations. Authors incorporate symbolism to express complicated concepts visually and show a thread of certain ongoing themes in their writing. Since, in most cases, symbols that are used are hidden in the text, they force the reader to engage in critical thinking. It makes the reader wonder about the metaphorical use of one or the other object as a symbol. If the theme of a book or an essay might be sensitive to certain people, symbolism also comes in handy. It can help express ideas that an author wants to address through the prism of a symbol, as opposed to talking about controversial things openly.

Another reason a writer might choose to use symbolism in his work is to create different levels of meaning in his story. This meaning is not only literal, but also deeper. It connects the reader with his story on a different, an emotional level, besides just telling the story. Readers, on the other hand, like to discover these hidden symbolic ties and meanings, because it gives them a chance to peek into the writer’s mind and get a sense of what intentions he had in creating them.

The bottom line is that symbolism lets a writer introduce his audience to a concept in an interesting poetic way that does not give away the idea right away, luring the reader into his world full of beautiful implications and complicated ties.

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How to Analyse Symbolism Step-by-Step

Analyzing symbolism in literature can be a rewarding but complex endeavor. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you navigate the process:

STEP 1 – Identify Potential Symbols

Begin by identifying objects, characters, settings, or events within the text that seem to carry deeper meaning beyond their literal interpretation. Look for recurring motifs, imagery, or patterns that are potentially symbolic to you.

STEP 2 – Consider Context

Examine the context surrounding the potential symbols. Consider the historical, cultural, and literary context in which the work was written and the author's background and intentions. Understanding the context can provide valuable insights into the symbolic significance of certain elements.

STEP 3 – Analyze Patterns and Associations

Look for patterns or associations between the potential symbols and other elements within the text. Consider how the symbols interact with characters, themes, and plot developments. Pay attention to any recurring themes or motifs to which the symbols may connect.

STEP 4 – Examine Character Perspectives

Consider how different characters within the text perceive and interact with the symbols. Analyze the symbolism from various character perspectives to understand its significance better. Note any differences or contradictions in how characters interpret the symbols.

STEP 5 – Explore Themes and Motifs

Reflect on the broader themes and themes of the text and consider how the symbols contribute to their development. Analyze how the symbols reinforce or challenge key themes, motifs, or messages the author conveys. Look for thematic connections between the symbols and the larger narrative structure.

STEP 6 – Research Symbolic Interpretations

Research to explore potential symbolic interpretations of the elements you've identified. Consult literary analyses, critical essays, and scholarly interpretations to gain additional perspectives on the symbolism within the text. Consider how different scholars and critics have interpreted the symbols and evaluate the validity of their arguments.

STEP 7 – Draw Conclusions and Make Connections

Synthesize your findings and conclude the symbolic significance of the elements you've analyzed. Consider how the symbols contribute to the overall meaning and interpretation of the text. Make connections between the symbols and the broader thematic concerns of the work, and articulate your insights coherently and persuasively.

STEP 8 – Support Your Analysis with Evidence

Provide evidence from the text to support your analysis of the symbolism. Quote relevant passages, descriptions, or dialogue that illustrate the symbolic significance of the elements you're discussing. Analyze the language, imagery, and narrative techniques employed by the author to convey the symbolic meaning of the elements.

STEP 9 – Consider Alternative Interpretations

Acknowledge and consider alternative interpretations of the symbolism within the text. Be open to different perspectives and interpretations, even if they diverge from your own. Engage with counterarguments and alternative readings to deepen your understanding of the symbolic complexity of the text.

STEP 10 – Reflect and Revise

Reflect on your analysis and consider how your interpretation of the symbolism enhances your understanding of the text. Revise your analysis as needed to clarify your arguments and refine your insights. Continuously revisit and reassess your analysis to uncover new layers of meaning and deepen your appreciation of the text's symbolic richness.

Essay Sample on Symbolism

Our sample essay sheds light on the historical and cultural context of the Symbolism, offering insights that enrich your appreciation and critical analysis of the text.

Major Representators of Symbolism in Literature

Here are some major representatives of symbolism in literature:

• Edgar Allan Poe

Known for his Gothic tales and poems, Poe often employed symbols to evoke themes of death, madness, and the macabre. Examples include the raven in "The Raven" as a symbol of grief and the pendulum in "The Pit and the Pendulum" as a symbol of impending doom.

• William Faulkner

Faulkner's works are rich in symbolism, particularly in his exploration of the American South and its complex social dynamics. In novels such as "The Sound and the Fury" and "As I Lay Dying," he uses symbols such as the dilapidated plantation house and the coffin to convey deeper themes of decay, loss, and the passage of time.

• Herman Melville

In "Moby-Dick," Melville employs symbols such as the white whale, the sea, and the ship to explore themes of obsession, destiny, and the human condition. These symbols serve as potent metaphors for the complexities of life and the pursuit of the unknown.

• James Joyce

Joyce's modernist masterpiece "Ulysses" is replete with symbols that reflect its characters' inner thoughts and experiences. The recurring motifs of water, mirrors, and music illuminate the themes of identity, memory, and the passage of time.

• Franz Kafka

Kafka's works, such as "The Metamorphosis" and "The Trial," are characterized by their surreal and symbolic nature, with symbols often representing themes of alienation, bureaucracy, and existential dread. The transformation of Gregor Samsa into a giant insect in "The Metamorphosis," for instance, is a powerful symbol of alienation and societal oppression.

• Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne's works, such as "The Scarlet Letter" and "Young Goodman Brown," are known for exploring Puritanical themes and symbolism to convey moral and psychological depth. The scarlet letter "A" in "The Scarlet Letter" is a potent symbol of sin, guilt, and redemption. At the same time, the forest in "Young Goodman Brown" represents the dark and mysterious forces of temptation and evil.

• Gabriel García Márquez

García Márquez, a pioneer of magical realism, often employs symbols and allegory to explore themes of love, power, and the supernatural. In "One Hundred Years of Solitude," the Buendía family's house symbolizes the cyclical nature of history and the passage of time. The yellow butterflies symbolize the fleeting beauty and fragility of life.

Types of Symbolism in Literature

There are many different literary devices that help writers to use symbolism in their texts:

Metaphor is a type of figurative language that shows characteristics of a subject through comparison with something else, their likeness or contrast between them. A great example of a metaphor can be found at the opening words of “As You Like It”, a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare:

“All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances ...”

Here, he compares human life to a theatre stage. Same as anything can happen in life, a stage can have all kinds of different plays portrayed. The play will also be over sooner or later, the same as life. By making this simple comparison, he explains the complicated and difficult laws of nature, such as human mortality. The last phrase refers to people’s ties and their meaning in each other’s lives as “exits” and “entrances”.

It is a figure of speech used when one thing gets assigned some qualities of the other and is compared to it. The two usually are compared to one another with the use of the word “as” or “like”. It might sound similar to a metaphor, but the latter gives only a slight implication that something is like something else, whereas a simile directly states it. A great example of a simile can be found in “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov:

“Elderly American ladies leaning on their canes listed towards me like towers of Pisa.”

Here Nabokov says that ladies’ canes remind him directly of the tower of Pisa — a building in Pisa, Italy, that is tilted to the side. This beautiful simile showcases artist’s elaborate way of expressing his thoughts, how educated and developed he is, but most importantly, gives the reader another visual of how these canes made him feel and how they might look like.

Another literary device that helps to use symbolism is an allegory. It is also similar to a metaphor, but expresses the meaning of the object, its significance, rather than an external characteristic of likeness. Through the association that allegory creates with the characters in writing, the reader gets a sense of how a situation or a problem at stake fits in the history of the world, art history, or a certain culture.

A good example of allegory in literature is “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding. There he compares society around him to a group of children who are stuck on a deserted island due to a plane crash, and are trying to survive there. The island in the book represents the world itself, the conch is a symbol of law and order, the fire represents destruction. Each child, with his role and character, represents a certain societal imperfection, depicting people’s flaws in the institutions of religion, politics, morality, and many others.

An archetype is another literary device used to represent a human behavioral pattern that is usually universal throughout the world and can be applied and understood in many cultures. The archetype can also be a place in space and time, a certain theme that is shared collectively by citizens of the world. Many archetypes came into literature from folk art and fairy tales.

One of the most common and famous archetypes is the hero. Some of the characteristics defining a hero include mysterious circumstances of their birth, struggle and proving everyone who lost faith in them wrong, tragic events throughout their lives, and complicated and dangerous adventures. A great example of an archetype is Harry Potter, the main character of the series by J.K. Rowling. He was orphaned by the cruel dark wizard Lord Voldemort and fought him throughout the book series.

An allusion is used to imply something or refer to another mythological, religious, or historical character without directly mentioning them. The use of allusion allows an author to deliver his text using elaborate language. Different rhetorical figures force readers to incorporate their background knowledge and associate the character or problem in question with external references.

In his book “Fahrenheit 451”, Ray Bradbury uses a reference to a historical tragedy that happened in 79 A.D. near the city of Pompeii, Italy, where a volcano called Vesuvius erupted and killed the entire population, leaving the city covered in ashes.

"Mildred ran from the parlor like a native fleeing an eruption of Vesuvius."

By using this explicit allusion, Bradbury explains that Mildred was running away from something terrible, as fast as she could, because it would otherwise have killed her — just like every inhabitant of Pompeii.

Hyperbole is used in text in order to exaggerate somebody’s trait or characteristic, such as power, beauty, wealth, influence, strength, and many others. Hyperbole usually has an amusing effect used to help readers visualize the strong points of the text. An example of hyperbole would be a line from Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”:

“I had to wait in the station for ten days — an eternity.”

In order to indicate how painful, worrisome, and exhausting it was for the character to wait in the station for ten days, he compares to an eternity. It was only 10 days but felt much longer given the circumstances.

Conventional Symbols in Literature

Some of the symbols in literature are incorporated in culture so deeply that they became conventional — clear to almost anyone, because they create images and moods instantly after being mentioned.

Colors usually suggest certain emotions and characteristics with powerful meanings: red — anger, blood, love, or passion; blue — calmness and peace of mind; green — wealth, jealousy, nature; white — purity, innocence, spiritualism; purple — royalty and many others.

Seasons in most cases pertain to age: spring — youth and freshness, start of something new; winter — elderly people or even death, the zenith of one’s life; summer — the peak of development, prime of life; fall — decay, negative change, middle life, growing older.

There are many other everyday life things that involve symbolism: light — good, hope, and freedom; darkness — bad luck, tragedy, evil, the unknown; wind — change in life, speed, transition, inability to change things, destruction; rainbow — hope for the better.

Some objects and animals can also carry symbolic meaning: dove — peace; snake – evil; horse — phallic sexuality; a ring — fidelity, happiness; a broken mirror — bad luck and misfortune; a chain — unity or imprisonment.

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Ways to Use Symbolism in Writing

As we saw earlier, there are many different literary tools that can help use symbolism in your own writing. Understanding of their function and examples helps you embed them in your essay. Symbolism has numerous functions in writing.

Some of the things you can create in your essays with symbolism are adding emotion . In “Night” by Ellie Wiesel, the concept of night, its darkness and mystery is used as a symbol of negative emotions, tragedy, despair, and death suffered by incarcerated Jews in the concentration camp.

Another role it might play in your paper is connecting themes . In “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the color green is used throughout the whole book to suggest wealth and lust for money, a desire of getting rich in spite of any moral issues, a luxury lifestyle, and grandeur.

You might also be interested in reading THE GREAT GATSBY BOOK THROUGH DAISY BUCHANAN CHARACTER

Defining a character is another thing a person might achieve while using symbolism. In Harper Lee’s 'To Kill a Mockingbird' the character of Tom is suggested to be innocent, because he was hurt, but he, like a mockingbird, is harmless.

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but . . . sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

The best way to include symbols in your essay is to do so once you are done writing and can look for places where it can be incorporated best out of the whole body of text. By no means should symbolism be your main focus of writing. Instead, you should focus on the strong points of the story and its characters. Symbolism is only a beautification of a piece that is already strong. It only helps you to enhance the story, make it alive and vivid, and showcase its complexity to the reader.

It is not extremely difficult to use symbolism in your own writing. Metaphor, allegory, hyperbole, allusion, archetype, and all the other literary devices discussed in this article are great aids to make your essay a beautiful piece of literature. A simple comparison of one thing to another can enhance the text tremendously, show off your semantic skills, and make the text beautiful overall, like a flower. See what I did there? Not that hard, I presume.

We also recommend that you read the article on how to write an essay introduction .

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What Is the Symbolism in Literature?

How do you analyze symbolism in literature, what is imagery and symbolism in literature.

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The Usage of Symbolism in Essay Writing

Symbolism is a device often used by authors in fictional writing, learn what it is and how you can apply it to essay writing...

When writing fictional literature, symbolism is a device often used by authors; where something tangible, an object, animal, or person, is used to represent a specific idea or entity. Symbolism can be used as a means of spicing up your text and engaging your readers; it’s particularly useful in essay writing. Let’s define symbolism, see when you should use it, and understand how it makes a huge difference to our writing.

Photo, Robert Eklund.

How do we define symbolism? You are already familiar with some of the literal devices that help narratives stand out——the metaphor or the paradox, for example——they’re tools taught in any school or university. Symbolism is no different. It is a literal device that helps readers identify with the text. Whether a poem, novel or short story, if there are recurring motifs used, it’s probably symbolism at work, try re-reading the text, there may be deeper meaning than at first glance.

Think about the symbols that surround us. We know that a cross can represent a church or death, and that a different type of cross could represent a hospital. We know that the Statue of Liberty represents the American notion of freedom; a deeper connotation could be Madonna with child representing the notion of motherhood. You can use your own symbols to portray ideas or entities in your text. If you’re not completely aware of how to use symbolism in your stories, you can always check out the free essay samples at https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/symbolism/ ; looking at an essay sample can help you familiarise yourself with other people’s work and understand how to use symbolism in your own work. Reading as much as you can is a must if you want to be a solid writer.

Why do we use symbolism? The main reason writers choose symbolism as a key device in their storytelling is to add depth to their work. When you’re not directly telling the reader what you really mean but somehow point to it, your story grows. It shows stronger character, and it catches the imagination of their audience. Students must show readers what they mean through the text; this way, their narrative becomes more sophisticated. Telling something exactly how it is can be obvious and boring.

What are the most well-known symbols used? There are three main types of symbols that you could use throughout your text. Let’s lay them out for you right here, you can think of ways you can present them in your work…

The Conventional Symbol: The best known of the three. The word ‘table’ represents a piece of furniture with four legs and a top; there’s no inherent relationship between the object and the word. English speakers simply agree, by convention, that the word ‘table’ refers to that particular type of furniture. Also consider flags, images that have a story behind them, but their design ultimately a convention; most folk don’t know the stories behind the flags of countries, they just ‘are’.

The Accidental Symbol: The opposite of a conventional symbol in that it is based on personal experience, but again there is no firm relation between the symbol and what it symbolises. If someone has a bad experience in a certain place they will learn to connect that place with negative emotions; if you eat something terrible, you will associate that with the type of food or restaurant. In contrast to the conventional, though, the accidental symbol cannot be shared by anyone else. For this reason accidental symbols are rarely used in myths, fairy tales, or works of art written in symbolic language because they are not easy to convey unless the writer adds a lengthy comment to each symbol they use.

The Universal Symbol: Here there is an intrinsic relationship between the symbol and what it represents, it is most likely what your teacher is talking about when close reading an essay. Universal symbols are understood across time and culture; because they link the external world to the internal, sensory one. Emotions and sensory experiences endure, so stories heavy in universal symbolism do also. A fire is symbolic of power and energy; a flock of black birds are symbolic of darkness and impending doom.

Photo, Artem Maltsev.

How should you use symbolism in your writing? Symbolism can be very effective in showing without telling. This can make your story more interesting to read and thus, more popular. Let’s look in more detail at how you can use symbolism throughout your narrative…

Showing without telling: The first, most common way of doing it. For example, in Harry Potter, the characters of Harry, Hermione, and Ron could be read as a symbolic definition for one’s thoughts, emotions, and actions in alignment. Harry could be seen as a symbol for action, Hermione for thought, and Ron for emotions. When they’re working together, a person is balanced and can succeed.

Adding imagery in the context: Looking at 1984 , we can understand that Orwell refers to ‘Big Brother’ as the government, for example. This image helps him get the symbol right in the reader’s mind.

The darker meaning of a symbol: Using symbols for dark purposes could also be a risk worth taking. Looking at the Harry Potter saga again, Voldemort used as a negative character is a symbol for power-hunger men who rule the world. This can be dark and scary but it gets the message across.

Connecting themes and characters: Symbols could also be used to connect various themes throughout the text. For example, money and materialism are strongly connected in the Great Gatsby through the symbol of language.

Wrapping Up: Using symbols in your text is a great way to help your readers visualise the story. It can also be a tool to explaining more complicated or complex processes within a story. Plus, using symbolism adds to the emotion of the text and keeps readers in your fictional world.

Vendy Adams is a researcher and content writer. He is well versed in his skills and passionate about reading. Vendy likes to volunteer and help students succeed academically in his free time.

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How to Use Symbolism in Your Writing

Last Updated: March 4, 2024 References

This article was co-authored by Melessa Sargent . Melessa Sargent is the President of Scriptwriters Network, a non-profit organization that brings in entertainment professionals to teach the art and business of script writing for TV, features and new media. The Network serves its members by providing educational programming, developing access and opportunity through alliances with industry professionals, and furthering the cause and quality of writing in the entertainment industry. Under Melessa's leadership, SWN has won numbers awards including the Los Angeles Award from 2014 through 2021, and the Innovation & Excellence award in 2020. This article has been viewed 21,284 times.

Symbolism, or using symbols to represent abstract ideas or qualities, is an important factor in fiction writing. It adds layers and gives your writing a more poetic voice. But it can be hard to strike the right balance between effective, subtle symbolism and hitting your reader over the head with clichés. Understanding the different kinds of symbolism you can use in your writing is a good place to start. Once you know about the different types of symbols you can incorporate into your writing, try adding some in to represent goals, dreams, feelings, and even events in your story.

Exploring Types of Symbolism

• Symbols can represent small or large ideas. Try starting with something small. Describing a character who is prone to anger as wearing bright red can help your reader make a visual connection to a personality trait.

• While metaphors connect a symbol subtly and indirectly to a story or a character, a simile is a much more direct way to make a connection.

• You don't need to use symbolism to describe every emotional moment. Save it for especially poignant moments.

• Using symbols to represent themes, rather than a character, is a good way to incorporate symbolism without being too heavy-handed.

• Using too many universal symbols can come off as cliché.

• For example, in Harry Potter , the character Albus Dumbledore's first name comes from the Latin word for white. This symbolizes his role as a good wizard, but wouldn't be obvious to every reader.
• If you aren't sure where to start, use a symbol that is personal to you, like the name of a character from one of your favorite books or an object from your childhood.

Practicing Using Symbolism

• Fairytales like Aesop's Fables are good examples of allegories. Read a few different ones to get an idea of what allegories look like.

• If you think you may be using too much symbolism, ask yourself if your story would still be engaging without the symbolism. If not, work on fleshing out the characters and the plot and toning down the symbolism.

• Goals can be concrete or abstract. Either way, you, the writer, should have a deep understanding of your character's motivations.

• You can also use a recurring symbol to create an emotional response. A classic example is the green light in The Great Gatsby that represents longing. Over the course of the story, the symbol becomes more and more meaningful.

• For example, if you don't want to end your story with the death of a character, try describing a natural ending like a sunset or winter.

• For example, if you find yourself using weather imagery over and over again, take a closer look at where you are using that imagery. Does it seem to reflect how your characters are feeling? Try expanding your descriptions or being more intentional about the placement of the imagery so that readers can make the connection to emotion.

Expert Q&A

• Revising is an important part of working with symbolism. Read over your own work and look for places you can add symbolism to strengthen the story you've already written. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0

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Expert Interview

Thanks for reading our article! If you'd like to learn more about tips to be an author, check out our in-depth interview with Melessa Sargent .

• ↑ https://www.masterclass.com/articles/writing-101-what-is-symbolism-symbolism-definition-and-examples-in-literature#how-to-use-symbolism-in-writing-in-2-easy-steps
• ↑ https://www.thebalancecareers.com/symbol-definition-fiction-writing-1277138
• ↑ https://letthewordsflow.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/symbolism-how-to-make-it-work-in-your-writing/
• ↑ https://writershelpingwriters.net/2014/07/5-important-ways-use-symbolism-story/
• ↑ https://www.masterclass.com/articles/writing-101-what-is-symbolism-symbolism-definition-and-examples-in-literature#5-ways-to-use-symbolism-in-writing

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What is Symbolism? | Definition & Examples

"what is symbolism": a guide for english teachers and students.

View the full series: The Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms

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"What is Symbolism?" Transcript (Spanish and English Subtitles Available in Video. Click HERE for Spanish Transcript)

By Gilad Elbom , Oregon State University Senior Instructor of Literature

20 March 2020

Symbolism is the idea that things represent other things . What we mean by that is that we can look at something — let’s say, the color red — and conclude that it represents not the color red itself but something beyond it: for example, passion, or love, or devotion. Or maybe the opposite: infidelity. The color red can also represent blood. It can also mean stop ­— when you approach a traffic light. It can symbolize communism. In other words, it can mean anything you want it to mean. In other words, it means everything. Or: it means nothing, because if you can assign any kind of symbolic interpretation to it, it has no internal value, no fixed or unchanging or universal meaning. It has no special quality that designates it as a symbol of one particular thing.

So the questions is: are there universal symbols that communicate agreed-upon concepts? We could talk, for example, about white a symbol of purity or innocence or life. But again, that would be a very superficial reading of literature, because white could also signify paleness, bloodlessness, lifelessness — and death. So once again, if white can signify one thing and its opposite — life and death — what kind of symbol is it?

A more sophisticated way of approaching symbolism would be to say that things have symbolic qualities only in certain contexts — and sometimes they do not symbolize anything at all. If we want to quote Gertrude Stein: sometimes a rose is a rose is a rose. Sometimes a rose doesn’t mean love or courtship or passion or desire or devotion — or anything beyond itself. Some flowers happen to be red, others are white or blue, and they have no symbolic meaning, neither in real life nor in literature .

symbolism_stein.jpg

I think it’s very tempting to treat every element in literature as a symbol of something. For example, a storm brewing on the horizon must be a symbol of the emotional turmoil that the main character is going through; or, the black car that the main character drives is a foreshadowing of his death; and so on. It’s important to remember that sometimes a storm on the horizon simply represents bad weather. Some cats are white, some are black, some are ginger. That doesn’t mean that white cats are more innocent or pure, or that the owners of black cats are morbid characters who are going to die. We’re all going to die, and sooner than we think, unfortunately.

So where do we see symbols that are smarter, symbols that are more sophisticated, more complex? I think it all depends on the context, and I think that smart works of literature can establish certain textual elements as symbols that are not necessarily invested with any kind of predetermined meaning: elements that we don’t tend to think of automatically as symbols of anything.

Here’s an example. If we take this very interesting novel by Gilbert Sorrentino, Under the Shadow , what it does is it shows us a series of images — or textural elements, or textual components — and we have no idea what they mean or why they are repeated throughout the novel, again and again, in different configurations. But then when we look at one of these elements — let’s say, the moon ­— every time we see it, every time characters look at the moon, we realize, gradually, that they are actually looking back into their past, into their personal history, or childhood memories.

More specifically, at some point in the book, an amateur astronomer, who is a physician by profession, points a telescope at the moon, and when he looks through the lens, what he sees is a young couple, a man and a woman — or sometimes a young woman and an older woman — bathing in a lake. It’s very strange. He’s startled by this image. How it is possible that this is what he sees when the telescope is pointed at the moon? What we find out, later in the novel, is that he’s looking at his own parents, and all of a sudden he gains access to a repressed childhood memory. So the next time the moon appears, we know that it probably symbolizes — or somehow represents — a particular hidden layer in the psychological makeup of the character looking at the moon.

symbolism_sorrentino.jpg

What it means is that the concept of identifying symbols in literature is not necessarily based on the idea of decoding — or replacing a familiar symbol with a designated meaning. The point is to examine textual elements in new contexts and attribute to them symbolic meanings that may have never existed before.

Want to cite this?

MLA Citation: Elbom, Gilad. "What is Symbolism?" Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms, 20 Mar. 2020, Oregon State University, https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-symbolism. Accessed [insert date].

Further Resources for Teachers

Students often interpret F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby symbolically, but they should also ask why the narrator (and, more importantly, Gatsby) wish to imbue their world with symbolic value. Gatsby's goal in the narrative is to bring the world into a symbolic order of his liking. In this respect, he is like some eager "symbol hunter" readers mentioned in this video. But the symbolic worldviews of the novel's characters often conflict both with each other and the material world, most notably (and ironically ) when the minor character Wilson confuses an advertisement for Doctor T. J. Eckleburg's business with God. Along similar lines, understanding the symbolic worldviews of narrators--how they ascribe certain particular and idiosyncratic rather than "universal" values to certain objects and people--can also help us to understand them as unreliable narrators .

For a simple example of this idea, consider H.D.'s short poem "Oread."

Writing Prompt: Who is the speaker of H.D.'s poem?  What does Oread mean? How might the Oread's worldview lead her to symbolically represent sea waves as "pines"?

Or consider Judith Ortiz Cofer's short story/memoir "Volar."

Writing Prompt: How might we understand the narrator's dreams and fantasies of having x-ray vision and the ability to fly symbolically? What does Supergirl stand in for here, and what message might Cofer's story be delivering through this symbolic attribution?

Interested in more video lessons? View the full series:

The Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms

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What Is Symbolism? Examples of Symbolism as a Literary Device

The Story Seekers

Symbolism is the use of a symbol, which can be a word or an image, to communicate a distinct idea. We live in a world full of symbols: Flags, icons, and even colors work symbolically to help us navigate our environments. Think about this — when you’re in public and need to use the restroom, you look for the basic, featureless human figures found on nearly all public restroom doors and signs. Or, when you’re moving through just about any space, online or offline, the color green lets you know you can proceed, while the color red tells you to stop.

Symbolism in literature works the same way. It’s a language writers use to communicate messages visually, even when their work isn’t illustrated. Within a text, symbolism works visually as pieces of imagery that create a picture in the reader’s mind. Sometimes, it’s literally visual, such as the symbolic illustrations on the Twilight book series covers.

What is symbolism in writing, and how does it work?

Symbolism is the use of words or images to symbolize specific concepts, people, objects, or events. In some cases, symbolism is broad and used to communicate a work’s theme, like Aslan the lion in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a symbol of Christ. In other cases, symbolism is used to communicate details about a character, setting, or plot point, such as a black cat being used to symbolize a character’s bad luck.

Symbolism is one of the many literary devices writers use to make their work more vivid. In a way, symbolism (and certain other literary devices, like personification and imagery) illustrates a piece of writing by creating pictures in the reader’s mind. In fact, some other literary devices, like metaphor and allegory, are often considered to be types of symbolism. Literary devices are the techniques writers use to communicate ideas and themes beyond what they can express literally.

When an entire work is symbolic, it’s known as an allegory . Animal Farm by George Orwell is one of the most well-known modern allegories. Otherwise, symbolism is often worked into a story or other type of creative work that’s meant to be read literally.

How to recognize symbolism

You can recognize symbolism when an image in a piece of text seems to indicate something other than its literal meaning. It might be repeated or seem somewhat jarring, as if the author is intentionally pointing it out (and they might be — though authors don’t always do this). For example, a character might be described as having piercing green eyes that fixate on others. This could be symbolic of that character’s jealousy. Symbolism can be obvious to the point of feeling too obvious, like naming an evil character Nick DeVille and describing his hairstyle as being reminiscent of horns. It can also be so subtle that you miss it. When this is the case, you might only recognize the symbolism on a second read-through, once you know how the story ends.

When is symbolism used?

Symbolism is used when literal language isn’t strong enough to express what the author needs to express. Compare these two sentences:

• He looked at his wedding ring and was reminded of his commitment to his marriage.
• He looked at his wedding ring, noticing its perfectly circular shape. It reminded him of his never-ending commitment to his marriage.

The second sentence uses the circle’s symbolism to build on the character’s reflection on his marriage. Notice how this second sentence still includes a literal description of how the ring reminded him of his commitment. Including symbolism in your writing doesn’t mean you have to “swap out” literal descriptions; it often enhances these literal descriptions.

Symbolism is used in every kind of creative writing. You’ve read it in poems and stories as well as creative nonfiction works, like personal essays and blog posts. It’s also frequently used in song lyrics, movies and television, and visual art.

Symbolism is almost never used in academic writing unless the paper is about the piece of symbolism. For example, you might write an essay about how Toni Morrison used symbolism in her novels, but you wouldn’t create your own symbolism to communicate your essay’s themes.

Types of symbolism

There are lots of different ways authors use symbolism in their work:

Color symbolism

Just about every color humans can see has some kind of emotional or psychological association. For example, red is often associated with anger and passion, while blue is often associated with calmness. Authors often rely on color psychology in their work, symbolizing different character traits, feelings, settings, or foreshadowing events to come through color imagery.

Animal symbolism

Certain animals are considered symbolic, such as a dove symbolizing peace or a rat symbolizing disease. Whether a species deserves certain cultural associations or not, that association can be a powerful symbolic tool. You might come across lion imagery to suggest royalty or snake imagery to suggest deceptiveness.

• Butterfly = transformation
• Lion = royalty, strength
• Swan = grace
• Owl = knowledge, wisdom

Symbolism of common objects

We’ve referenced this kind of symbolism a few times already in this post, so here are a few more common symbols:

• Apple = temptation
• Chains = imprisonment
• Crown = power
• Ring = eternity
• Scales = justice, the law
• Skull and crossbones = danger, poison
• Suitcase = travel, a journey

One thing to keep in mind about symbolism is that certain images are culture-specific. For example, the color yellow is associated with fun, joy, and playfulness in the United States. In Japan, it’s associated with courage. So while dressing a character in yellow might clearly tell Japanese readers that the character is brave, this symbol could go right over American readers’ heads — or just make them think the character is a fun, joyful person.

How to use symbolism

Sometimes, symbolism is obvious. If you’re familiar with the Game of Thrones tagline “Winter is coming,” you’ve encountered obvious symbolism. Sometimes, symbolism is so obvious that it feels ham-fisted and detracts from the story.

And other times, symbolism is so subtle that you don’t even realize it’s there. That’s not effective, either — the whole point of symbolism is for it to communicate with readers at a level beyond the literal, acting almost like a form of subliminal messaging.

So how can you hit that symbolism sweet spot and craft images that connect with readers without being too blatant? First, ask yourself what you want to communicate through symbolism. Do you want to subtly suggest that your main character’s friend is someone the reader shouldn’t trust? Maybe you want to express that your personal essay about baking pies with your little sister is about something much bigger than getting your ingredient ratios right. Is your goal to make a profound statement about how certain things we take for granted can have unexpected, far-reaching results?

These are all tasks symbolism can accomplish.

You can use symbolism in the allusions you make, like alluding to “going down the rabbit hole” in a personal essay by suggesting that you’re late for a very important date. You can also use it in any personification you employ, like demonstrating a character’s love of nature by personifying the trees that surround their home.

False symbolism

When an image in a work seems symbolic, but actually doesn’t symbolize anything, it’s known as false symbolism.

One famous example of false symbolism is the assumption that the Lord of the Rings books are an allegory for World War II. Tolkien publicly stated that this is not the case, but despite this, people have made this connection over and over again throughout the decades since the books were initially published.

As an author, you can’t prevent readers from making assumptions about what you meant to communicate in your work. You can certainly discuss your work and communicate what you wanted to depict through symbolism, but once your work is published and available to the public, you lose some control over how it’s interpreted.

Symbolism examples

Symbolism isn’t just something you find in literature; it’s found in architecture, city planning, historical events, and just about every other area of life. For example, NASA’s Apollo missions, the series of missions that landed the first humans on the moon, were named for the Greek god Apollo. These missions were instrumental in enlightening humanity about what lies beyond our planet. They were given that name because in Greek mythology, Apollo rides his chariot across the sun. This became a symbol for the monumental scale and importance of the program’s vision.

Other examples of symbolism in history, literature, and the physical world:

• Fitzgerald’s use of the color green throughout The Great Gatsby to illustrate the wealth and money as a lifeblood among his characters
• The Church of the Light in Ibaraki-Shi, Japan, which has a cross shape cut out of the wall, allowing in light that symbolizes attendees’ faith
• Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan, which has an unconventional shape symbolizing the nation and its culture’s emergence and readiness to overcome obstacles
• The concept of memento mori, where small objects and pieces of art remind the viewer of their own mortality
• Dutch iconography, an art movement that incorporated various pieces of symbolism to communicate concepts like temptation, national pride, and gluttony (among many other things)
• Water as a symbol of life in Virgina Woolf’s essay “The Waves”

Symbolism FAQs

What is symbolism.

Symbolism is the use of words or images to symbolize specific concepts, people, objects, or events. The key here is that the symbols used aren’t literal representations, but figurative or implied ones. For example, starting a personal essay about transformation with imagery of a butterfly.

How does symbolism work?

Symbolism works by substituting one distinct image for another concept. It works by showing, rather than telling. For example, instead of stating that challenging economic times were starting to arise, an author might state that the weather was becoming increasingly stormy. At the literal level, the reader interprets this as dark clouds, rain, and thunder. At the figurative level, they interpret it as a symbol of the general turmoil affecting the character’s fortunes.

What are some examples of symbolism?

• Red roses symbolize love
• A rainbow symbolizes hope
• A dove symbolizes peace

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How to Write a Symbolism Essay: The Great Gatsby, The Lottery, & Other Examples

In this article, we will discuss the keys to a good symbolism essay. You should know many nuances to master this type of writing.

Symbolism essay isn’t the same as other types of essays. Let’s say you’re writing The Yellow Wallpaper symbolism essay. Under no circumstances should you retell the whole plot of the story.

So, we are here to help you become a symbolism essay professional.

Let’s get down to it!

• 🤿 Symbolism Essay Writing Guide

📐 Symbolism Essay Outline

📚 symbolism essay topics, 🤿 symbolism essay – writing guide.

It’s time for us to look into the main aspects of the essay on symbolism.

First, we will try to define it. After that, check for information about the most common symbols in literature.

What Is an Essay on Symbolism?

A symbol is an object, or phenomena, or anything else, that has some additional notions behind it. In literature, the setting, an object, or an image can symbolize something.

A symbol in literature is a device for delivering multiple meanings and ideas through an image, concept, or object. That means an object in question has other layers of meaning beyond the literal one.

For instance, specific colors may be associated with certain ideas. What comes to your mind at the thought of black color? Probably, death, or grief, or tragedy. So, the author uses this color to express a gruesome atmosphere.

This is how symbolism works.

Common Symbols in Literature

There’s an endless number of symbols in literature, and they all are different. However, most authors use particular types of symbols: objects, events, and characters. We will try to interpret them with you.

We suggest considering some examples of symbolism in literature.

Symbolic objects are everything that exists in the material world. For example, things, their parts, animals and birds, plants. In other words, it is anything you can potentially touch.

An American poet Sara Teasdale uses a flower as a symbol of the wisdom of youth in her poem Wild Asters . In the lines,

In the spring I asked the daisies If his words were true, And the clever, clear-eyed daisies Always knew.

Teasdale chooses symbolism through personification. The daisies serve as a symbol for youth wisdom and can give answers.

Symbolism can also be developed through characters representing abstract ideas and delivering a solid association. Animals count, too, if they play a significant role in a plot. Let’s not exclude spirits, ghosts, and other mythical creatures because they are often common symbols in literature.

• Shakespeare was intensely into symbols. For example, in Hamlet , one can find a lot of them. If you read the play, you must remember two gravediggers. One of whom was a reflecting man with philosophical views. His appearance and philosophical attitude aren’t accidental. The gravedigger signified the idea of all people being equal before the face of death.
• In the same play, the ghost of Hamlet’s father serves a significant symbolic role. Metaphorically, his presence foreshadows the upcoming tragic events for Claudius, the Queen, and Denmark in general. The whole concept of a dead man’s image can give chills. That’s why this image is powerful enough to create an ominous atmosphere.

Authors can use dramatic changes and twists to symbolize a new phase. One can identify symbolic meanings from how the plot unfolds and what events occur. This is an excellent way to deliver the idea of a character’s inner changes. Let’s look into examples closer.

• In Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, the weather changes play a significant role. Whenever a storm was about to come, some tragic events took place. Lousy weather symbolized growing tension and negativity that later broke into a scandal or drama. Such a literary device as foreshadowing is used here and expressed to readers through symbolism.
• John Fowls also used elements of symbolism in his books. His famous novel The Magnus has numerous symbols and metaphors. For instance, Alison staged her suicide and later showed up in front of Nicholas. Her fake suicide symbolized the death of her old self and further rebirth. She wanted to do everything for Nicholas but was weak. Once she appears again, we see a completely new person – solid and decisive.

Other Symbols

Basically, you can refer anything to this class of symbols. We’ll be talking about those that don’t fit into the previous groups. There are plenty of them: various details of other characters, objects, motifs—for example, colors, sounds, or composition.

• If you write color symbolism in The Great Gatsby essay, you won’t have any problems. The novel is drenched in color symbols. Here’s proof: Fitzgerald uses white to symbolize innocence and purity. Yellow color foreshadows a tragedy: Gatsby walked under yellowing trees right before being killed.
• Even the whole story can symbolize something. Take Animal Farm by George Orwell. The animal farm illustrates the savage ruling regimes, such as fascist and Soviet Russian. The author carried the allegory through the whole novel.

How to Write a Symbolism Essay – Analysis

We want to provide you with a guideline on symbolism essay writing:

In this part, we will discuss a symbolism essay outline. It consists of an introduction, body, and conclusion, like any other academic paper. Read about the importance and different ways to outline an essay in our article about outline making.

Let’s go through a symbolism essay outline.

Symbolism Essay Introduction

You can choose anything for the symbolism analysis. Make sure your readers are perfectly aware of your choice too. Introduce them to the subject. Speak on it generally so that the audience can get the idea of a symbol. In the end, explain why you chose this particular topic for the symbolism essay.

Symbolism Essay Body

Now, it’s time to specify the symbol you chose. Elaborate on it: what is written in the book? What general sense this symbol has beyond literature? Tell about your associations – what does this symbol represent for you? Besides, discuss why it’s essential to analyze it in an essay on symbolism.

Remember to back up your opinion with the facts from an original text.

Symbolism Essay Conclusion

Wrap up your essay by writing a consistent concluding paragraph. You can do it by bringing up all the points mentioned in the body. Once again, show that the symbol is significant to talk about. Finally, sum up all the main ideas. Use our free summary generator to develop a good resume of your key thoughts.

Now you know how to write a symbolism essay but let’s look at some examples first.

Looking for a good topic for your symbolism essay? In this section, you will find some awesome ideas for your paper.

• Symbols in “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker.
• Symbolism in Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.”
• The Christmas tree as a symbol in Henrik Ibsen’s play “A Doll’s House.”
• The symbols of life and death in the poem by Dylan Thomas “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”
• Symbolism in “On Being Brought From Africa to America” by Wheatley.
• “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty: Analysis of symbols.
• Conflict and symbolism in Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.”
• The symbolic meaning of fire in the Fahrenheit 451 novel by Ray Bradbury.
• Symbols in the book Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody.
• The symbols of success and failure in the Death of a Salesman play by Arthur Miller.
• Symbolism in the Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass by Fredrick Douglass.
• The symbolic nature of Frost’s poetry.
• “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin: Analysis of symbols.
• How symbols help reveal characters in “Doll’s House” by Ibsen.
• What is the symbolic meaning of a streetcar in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams?
• “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin: The symbolism of darkness.
• The scarlet letter as the most powerful symbol in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
• Symbolism of quilts in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use.”
• Franz Kafka and “The Metamorphosis”: The symbols of humanity.
• Symbols in “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros.
• Religious symbolism in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor.
• “The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain: The symbolism of different settings.
• Symbols of friendship in “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich.
• The Epic of Gilgamesh : Religious symbols.
• Nature as a symbol in “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost.
• Symbolism in “The Deserted Village” by Oliver Goldsmith.
• The symbolic meaning of money in “Brother, I’m Dying” by Edwidge Danticat.
• Major symbols in Oedipus Rex by Sophocles.
• Symbols related to mental illness in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey.
• The symbolism of bathing suits in “A&P” by John Updike.
• Color symbolism in Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.
• “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop: Analysis of symbols.
• Symbols in Middlemarch by George Eliot.
• The Question of Hu by Jonathan D. Spence: Symbolism.
• Characters as symbols in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried .
• White elephants as a symbol of an unwanted child in “Hills Like White Elephants” by Hemingway.
• The symbolism of a handkerchief in “Othello” by William Shakespeare.
• Symbolism in “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving.
• The symbolic meaning of schools in The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.
• Aunt Martha as a symbol of womanhood in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Jacobs.
• Themes and symbolism of Native Son by Richard Wright.
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: The symbolic meaning of the book’s title.
• Symbolism in The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus by Marlowe.
• The symbolic nature of food in Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.
• The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño: Analysis of symbols.
• Emily’s house as a symbol in “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner.
• What symbols are used in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Hurston?
• The symbolic meaning of the veil in “The Souls of Black Folk” by Du Bois.
• What symbols reflect good and evil in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe?
• The symbolism of the bridge in A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller.
• Symbols in The World is Flat — the Book by Thomas L. Friedman.
• The symbolic meaning of the title of the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
• How is materialism symbolically reflected in Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer?
• The symbolism of blindness in “Cathedral” — the story by Raymond Carver.
• Yorick’s skull as a symbol of equality in Shakespeare’s Hamlet .
• Symbols in Claude McKay’s Crazy Mary .
• The symbolism of the title in Fences by August Wilson.
• Analysis of symbols in “On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet” by Levet.
• The symbols of racial and gender discrimination in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.
• Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave Memoir: The symbols of slavery.

The Development of the Modern Prose Poem in Symbolist Literature

Symbolism and the Modern Prose Poem One of the many lasting influences of the symbolist movement on international literature can be seen in the development of the modern prose poem during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Prose poetry is written in the form of prose, yet maintains the lyrical language use, suggestive imagery, and thematic sensibilities of poetry. The formal properties of the prose poem are intended to liberate verse from traditional requirements of metrical form and line breaks. The prose poem also liberates prose from traditional requirements of story line and narrative closure. Prose poems are usually short, generally anywhere from one paragraph to several pages in length. One of the enduring literary issues raised by prose poetry is the question of how to define it as a literary form distinct from both poetry and prose. The very notion of prose poetry thus raises questions about the boundary between prose and poetry.

Although the symbolists did not invent prose poetry, they freed it from its traditional tone and themes and developed the form as a modern mode of expression. Baudelaire is credited as the inventor of the modern prose poem, producing the important volume Little Poems in Prose (1869; later published as Paris Spleen ). Other important volumes of symbolist prose poetry include Rimbaud’s Illuminations (1886) and A Season in Hell (1873). Mallarmé, one of the founders of Symbolism, also wrote a number of important prose poems.

The Prose Poem in the Nineteenth Century French poets were first introduced to the prose poem, a relatively obscure genre of literature, in the mid-nineteenth century, through the French writer Louis Bertrand (1807–1841; also known as Aloysius Bertrand). Bertrand first began to publish his prose poetry in a newspaper in 1828. However, his collected volume of prose poetry Gaspard de la Nuit ( Gaspard of the Night ) was not published until 1842, a year after his death. With this publication, Bertrand was the first significant French writer to utilize the form of the prose poem.

The prose poems of Gaspard of the Night are based on Bertrand’s fascination with the medieval history of the city of Dijon, France, and express a romanticized vision of the city’s gothic past. Bertrand’s prose poetry shows the influence of the romantic movement in literature, with which he was peripherally associated. His prose poetry, however, was entirely innovative in developing a French prose form that retains the lyrical qualities of poetry.

Baudelaire can be credited with bringing the prose poetry of Bertrand to the attention of the French literary world in 1869, when he mentioned the volume with high praise in his introduction to Little Poems in Prose . As Baudelaire explains in this introduction, he was first inspired to try his own hand at composing prose poetry through his reading of Bertrand’s Gaspard of the Night . Baudelaire confesses his debt to Bertrand as his inspiration in attempting to expand the possibilities of the prose poem by applying it to expressions of life in the modern city. Baudelaire states that, while reading Gaspard of the Night :

for at least the twentieth time . . . the idea came to me to try something similar, and to apply to the description of modern life, or rather one modern and more abstract life, the procedure [Bertrand] had applied to the depiction of ancient life, so strangely picturesque.

Baudelaire further describes his “dream” of writing in a form that combined elements of poetry and prose:

Which of us has not, in his ambitious days, dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and without...

(This entire section contains 1577 words.)

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rhyme, supple enough and choppy enough to fit the soul’s lyrical movements, the undulations of reverie, the jolts of consciousness?

Baudelaire first coined the term “prose poem” in reference to a group of his own poems published in 1861. He also describes his innovative style of prose poetry as “fables of modern life.” Edward K. Kaplan, in an introduction to his 1989 volume of translations of Little Poems in Prose , observes that one of the modern elements of Baudelaire’s fables is the fact that, unlike traditional fables that end with a clear moral prescription, they “undermine any reassuring interpretations.” Kaplan further describes this modern element of moral ambiguity in Baudelaire’s prose poetry:

Dismantling all forms of complacency and idealism, the Baudelarian “prose poem” amalgamates, in a dialogically open-ended literary unit, ambiguity and judgment, kindness and cruelty, anger and generosity, reveries and analysis. There are no definitive lessons—only responses.

Baudelaire’s fifty prose poems were published posthumously in the 1869 volume Little Poems in Prose . Although Baudelaire did not invent the prose poem, the works in this volume represent his revolutionizing impact on the genre. Baudelaire modernized prose poetry and profoundly influenced the symbolist poets, many of whose greatest works are prose poems.

The prose poems of Little Poems in Prose treat the subject of modern urban life in Paris, a topic Baudelaire thought to be especially suited to the form of the prose poem. Baudelaire focused on the ugliness of urban existence, but regarded his subject with hopefulness and compassion. While the poems of Flowers of Evil , traditional in form, express the beauty of Paris, the prose poems of Little Poems in Prose focus on the urban squalor and human suffering of the modern city.

Following in Baudelaire’s footsteps, Rimbaud published two major volumes of prose poetry. As in Baudelaire’s Little Poems in Prose , Rimbaud in his volume Illuminations explored the cityscapes of Paris through the form of the prose poem. Unlike Baudelaire’s Paris, Rimbaud’s visions of the urban landscape are imbued with a sense of mystery beneath the squalid surface of modern city life. A Season in Hell , Rimbaud’s second volume of prose poetry, represents an intensely personal delving into the poet’s spiritual and artistic inner-anguish.

Prose Poetry in the Twentieth Century During the early twentieth century many writers, influenced by the French symbolists, tried their hands at prose poetry. Following the lead of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé, the later French symbolist writers Paul Valéry, Paul Fort, and Paul Claudel composed notable prose poems. Important writers outside of France, such as Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and Sherwood Anderson, are also recognized for their outstanding prose poetry.

However, the prose poem throughout most of the twentieth century remained a relatively unpopular form among most readers and critics, as well as most writers. Thus, while the free verse poem, invented by the symbolists, became the dominant form of poetry throughout the twentieth century, the modern prose poem, also developed by the symbolists, was, until recently, relegated to a relatively obscure place in twentieth-century literature. The very form of the prose poem was not taken seriously by the majority of literary critics and many writers. As C. W. Truesdale observes in a preface to The Party Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry (1996), the prose poem “has never received its critical due despite the excitement the form has generated among poets themselves.” Truesdale describes a general “critical neglect—even hostility” to the prose poem among literary critics throughout most of the twentieth century. Truesdale goes on to assert that the dominance of free verse “has forced the prose poem . . . to the sidelines, has marginalized it as a genre.”

Beginning in the 1960s, however, prose poetry gained a renewed interest among writers, and small literary magazines began to publish prose poetry with increasing frequency. Influential American writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Robert Bly contributed to this renewed interest in the prose poem in the 1960s and 1970s. The volume The Prose Poem: An International Anthology (1976), edited by Michael Benedikt, helped to introduce English language readers to a broad range of prose poetry. The 1980s and 1990s saw increased interest in the prose poem among English-language writers and editors of small literary journals. During these final decades of the twentieth century, a number of anthologies of prose poetry, as well as volumes of literary criticism focused on the prose poem, saw publication. In the 1990s, journals devoted entirely to prose poetry, such as The Prose Poem: An International Journal , sprang up to accommodate this growing interest.

In the late twentieth century, a variety of terms came to designate prose poetry. Because of the brevity of the prose poem, its boundaries have also come to overlap with the emergence of a new form of very short fiction. Thus, the following terms have been applied to the prose poem form: “sudden fiction,” “flash fiction,” the “modern parable,” the “modern fable,” the “short short story,” and “micro-fiction,” among others.

In a 1996 essay entitled “The Poetry of Village Idiots,” Charles Simic defines the prose poem as “an impossible amalgamation of lyric poetry, anecdote, fairy tale, allegory, joke, journal entry, and many other kinds of prose.” However, the very definition of prose poetry remains a central topic of debate, and nearly all English-language anthologies of prose poetry during this period begin with an overview of the ongoing debate as to the question of whether or not the prose poem exists as a distinct literary form, and, if so, how it might be defined and distinguished from both poetry and prose. Nonetheless, nearly all critics and writers acknowledge the debt of modern prose poetry to the innovations of the French symbolist poets in elevating the prose poem to the status of a high art particularly suited to expressions of modern life.

Source: Liz Brent, Critical Essay on Symbolism, in Literary Movements for Students , The Gale Group, 2003.

Cite this page as follows:

"Symbolism - The Development of the Modern Prose Poem in Symbolist Literature." Literary Movements for Students, Vol. 1. Gale Cengage, 27 June 2024 <https://www.enotes.com/topics/symbolism/critical-essays/essays-criticism#critical-essays-essays-criticism-development-modern-prose-poem-symbolist>

The Term and Concept of Symbolism in Literary History

The term and concept of symbolism (and symbol) is so vast a topic that it cannot even be sketched within the limits of this paper. The word goes back to ancient Greece and, there, had a complex history which has not, I suspect, been traced adequately in the only history of the term, Max Schlesinger’s Geschichte des Symbols , published in 1912.

What I want to discuss is something much more specific: not even symbol and symbolism in literature but the term and concept of symbolism as a period in literary history. It can, I suggest, be conveniently used as a general term for the literature in all Western countries following the decline of nineteenth-century realism and naturalism and preceding the rise of the new avant-garde movements: futurism, expressionism, surrealism, existentialism, or whatever else. How has it come about? Can such a use be justified?

We must distinguish among different problems: the history of the word need not be identical with the history of the concept as we might today formulate it. We must ask, on the one hand, what the contemporaries meant by it, who called himself a “symbolist,” or who wanted to be included in a movement called “symbolism,” and on the other hand, what modern scholarship might decide about who is to be included and what characteristics of the period seem decisive. In speaking of “symbolism” as a period-term located in history we must also think of its situation in space. Literary terms most frequently radiate from one center but do so unevenly; they seem to stop at the frontiers of some countries or cross them and languish there or, surprisingly, flourish more vigorously on a new soil. A geography of literary terms is needed which might attempt to account for the spread and distribution of terms by examining rival terms or accidents of biography or simply the total situation of a literature.

There seems to be a widespread agreement that the literary history of the centuries since the end of the Middle Ages can be divided into five successive periods: Renaissance, baroque, classicism, romanticism, and realism. Among these terms baroque is a comparative newcomer which has not been accepted everywhere, though there seems a clear need of a name for the style that reacted against the Renaissance but preceded classicism. There is, however, far less agreement as to what term should be applied to the literature that followed the end of the dominance of realism in the 1880s and 90s. The term “modernism” and its variants, such as the German “Die Moderne,” have been used but have the obvious disadvantage that they can be applied to any contemporary art. Particularly in English, the term “modern” has preserved its early meaning of a contrast to classical antiquity or is used for everything that occurred since the Middle Ages. The Cambridge Modern History is an obvious example. The attempts to discriminate between the “modern” period now belonging to the past and the “contemporaneous” seem forced, at least terminologically. “Modo,” after all, means “now.” “Modernism” used so broadly as to include all avant-garde art obscures the break between the symbolist period and all post-symbolist movements such as futurism, surrealism, existentialism, etc. In the East it is used as a catchall for everything disapproved as decadent, formalistic, and alienated: it has become a pejorative term set against the glories of socialist realism.

The older terms were appealed to at the turn of the century by many theorists and slogan writers, who either believed that these terms are applicable to all literature or consciously thought of themselves as reviving the style of an older period. Some spoke of a new “classicism,” particularly in France, assuming that all good art must be classical. Croce shares this view. Those who felt a kinship with the romantic age, mainly in Germany, spoke of “Neuromantik,” appealing to Friedrich Schlegel’s dictum that all poetry is romantic. Realism also asserted its claim, mainly in Marxist contexts, in which all art is considered “realistic” or at least “a reflection of reality.” I need only allude to Georg Lukács’ recent Aesthetik , in which this thesis is repeated with obsessive urgency. I have counted the phrase “Widerspiegelung der Wirklichkeit” in the first volume; it appears 1,032 times. I was too lazy or bored to count it in Volume Two. All these monisms endanger meaningful schemes of literary periodization. Nor can one be satisfied with a dichotomy such as Fritz Strich’s “Klassik und Romantik,” which leads away from period concepts into a universal typology, a simple division of the world into sheep and goats. For many years I have argued the advantage of a multiple scheme of periods, since it allows a variety of criteria. The one criterion “realism” would divide all art into realistic and nonrealistic art and thus would allow only one approving adjective: “real” or some variant such as “true” or “lifelike.” A multiple scheme comes much closer to the actual variety of the process of history. Period must be conceived neither as some essence which has to be intuited as a Platonic idea nor as a mere arbitrary linguistic label. It should be understood as a “regulative idea,” as a system of norms, conventions, and values which can be traced in its rise, spread, and decline, in competition with preceding and following norms, conventions, and values.

“Symbolism” seems the obvious term for the dominant style which followed nineteenth-century realism. It was propounded in Edmund Wilson’s Axel’s Castle (1931) and is asumed as a matter of course in Maurice Bowra’s Heritage of Symbolism (1943). We must beware, of course, of confusing this historical form with age-old symbolism or with the view that all art is symbolic, as language is a system of symbols. Symbolism in the sense of a use of symbols in literature is clearly omnipresent in literature of many styles, periods, and civilizations. Symbols are all-pervasive in medieval literature and even the classics of realism—Tolstoy and Flaubert, Balzac and Dickens—use symbols, often prominently. I myself am guilty of arguing for the crucial role of symbol in any definition of romanticism, and I have written at length on the long German debate from Goethe to Friedrich Theodor Vischer about the meaning of the term “symbol” and its contrast to the term “allegory.”

For our purposes I want to focus on the fortunes of the concept as a term, first for a school, then as a movement, and finally as a period. The term “symbolisme” as the designation for a group of poets was first proposed by Jean Moréas, the French poet of Greek extraction. In 1885 he was disturbed by a journalistic attack on the decadents in which he was named together with Mallarmé. He protested: “the so-called decadents seek the pure Concept and the eternal Symbol in their art, before anything else.” With some contempt for the mania of critics for labels, he suggested the term “Symbolistes” to replace the inappropriate “décadents.” In 1886 Moréas started a review Le Symboliste , which perished after four issues. On September 18, 1886, he published a manifesto of “Symbolisme” Loaded gun carriages during the time of the Paris Commune in the Figaro . Moréas, however, soon deserted his own brainchild and founded another school he called the “école romane.” On September 14, 1891, in another number of the Figaro Moréas blandly announced that “symbolisme” was dead. Thus “symbolisme” was an ephemeral name for a very small clique of French poets. The only name still remembered besides Moréas’ is Gustave Kahn. It is easy to collect pronouncements by the main contemporary poets repudiating the term for themselves. Verlaine, in particular, was vehemently resentful of this “Allemandisme” and even wrote a little poem beginning “À bas le symbolisme mythe/ et termite.”

In a way which would need detailed tracing, the term, however, caught on in the later 80s and early 90s as a blanket name for recent developments in French poetry and its anticipations. Before Moréas’ manifesto, Anatole Baju, in Décadent , April 10, 1886, spoke of Mallarmé as “the master who was the first to formulate the symbolic doctrine.” Two critics, Charles Morice, with La Littérature de tout à l’heure (1889) and Téodore de Wyzéwa, born in Poland, first in the essay “Le Symbolisme de M. Mallarmé” (1887), seemed to have been the main agents, though Morice spoke rather of “synthèse” than of symbol, and Wyzéwa thought that “symbol” was only a pretext and explained Mallarmé’s poetry purely by its analogy to music. As early as 1894 Saint Antoine (pseudonym for Henri Mazel) prophesied that “undoubtedly, symbolism will be the label under which our period will be classed in the history of French literature.”

It is still a matter of debate in French literary history when this movement came to an end. It was revived several times expressly—e.g. in 1905 around a review, Vers et prose . Its main critic, Robert de Souza, in a series of articles, “Où Nous en sommes” (also published separately, 1906), ridiculed the many attempts to bury symbolism as premature and proudly claimed that Gustave Kahn, Verhaeren, Vielé-Griffin, Maeterlinck, and Régnier were then as active as ever. Valéry professed so complete an allegiance to the ideals of Mallarmé that it is difficult not to think of him as a continuator of symbolism, though in 1938, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the symbolist manifesto, Valéry doubted the existence of symbolism and denied that there is a symbolist aesthetic. Marcel Proust, in the posthumously published last volume of his great series Le Temps retrouvé (1926), formulated an explicitly symbolist aesthetics. But his own attitude to symbolist contemporaries was often ambiguous or negative. In 1896 Proust had written an essay condemning obscurity in poetry. Proust admired Maeterlinck but disliked Péguy and Claudel. He even wrote a pastiche of Régnier, a mock-solemn description of a head cold. When Le Temps retrouvé (1926) was published and when a few years later (1933) Valery Larbaud proclaimed Proust a symbolist, symbolism had, at least in French poetry, definitely been replaced by surrealism.

André Barre’s book on symbolism (1911) and particularly Guy Michaud’s Message poétique du symbolisme (1947), as well as many other books of French literary scholarship, have, with the hindsight of literary historians, traced the different phases of a vast French symbolist movement: the first phase, with Baudelaire (who died in 1867) as the precursor; the second, when Verlaine and Mallarmé were at the height of their powers, before the 1886 group; the third, when the name became established; and then, in the twentieth century, what Michaud calls “Néo-symbolisme,” represented by “La Jeune Parque” of Valéry and L’Annonce faite à Marie of Claudel , both dating from 1915. It seems a coherent and convincing conception which needs to be extended to prose writers and dramatists: to Huysmans after A Rebours (1884), to the early Gide, to Proust in part, and among dramatists, at least to Maeterlinck, who, with his plays L’Intruse and Les Aveugles (1890) and Pelléas et Mélisande (1892), assured a limited penetration of symbolism on the stage.

Knowledge of the French movement and admiration for it soon spread to the other European countries. We must, however, distinguish between reporting on French events and even admiration shown by translations, and a genuine transfer and assimilation of the French movement in another literature. This process varies considerably from country to country; and the variation needs to be explained by the different traditions which the French importation confronted.

In English, George Moore’s Confessions of a Young Man (1888) and his Impressions and Opinions (1891) gave sketchy and often poorly informed accounts of Verlaine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Laforgue. Mallarmé’s poetry is dismissed as “aberrations of a refined mind,” and symbolism is oddly defined as “saying the opposite of what you mean.” The three essays on Mallarmé by Edmund Gosse, all dating from 1893, are hardly more perceptive. After the poet’s death Gosse turned sharply against him. “Now that he is no longer here the truth must be said about Mallarmé. He was hardly a poet.” Even Arthur Symons, whose book The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899) made the decisive breakthrough for England and Ireland, was very lukewarm at first. While praising Verlaine (in Academy , 1891) he referred to the “brain-sick little school of Symbolistes ” and “the noisy little school of Décadents ,” and even in later articles on Mallarmé he complained of “jargon and meaningless riddles.” But then he turned around and produced the entirely favorable Symbolist Movement . It should not, however, be overrated as literary criticism or history. It is a rather lame impressionistic account of Nerval, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Laforgue, Mallarmé, Huysmans, and Maeterlinck, with emphasis on Verlaine. There is no chapter on Baudelaire. But most importantly, the book was dedicated to W. B. Yeats, proclaiming him “the chief representative of that movement in our country.” Symons had made his first trip to Paris in 1889; he had visited Mallarmé, met Huysmans and Maeterlinck, and a year later met Verlaine, who in 1893 became his guest on his ill-fated visit to London. Symons knew Yeats vaguely since 1891, but they became close friends in 1895 only after Yeats had completed his study of Blake and had elaborated his own system of symbols from other sources: occultism, Blake, and Irish folklore. The edition of Blake Yeats had prepared with Edwin Ellis in 1893 was introduced by an essay on “The Necessity of Symbolism.” In 1894 Yeats visited Paris in the company of Symons and there saw a performance of Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s Axël. The essay “The Symbolism of Poetry” (1900) is then Yeats’ first full statement of his symbolist creed. Symons’ dedication to Yeats shows an awareness of symbolism as an international movement. “In Germany,” he says, exaggerating greatly, “it seems to be permeating the whole of literature, its spirit is that which is deepest in Ibsen, it has absorbed the one new force in Italy, Gabriele D’Annunzio. I am told of a group of symbolists in Russian literature, there is another in Dutch literature, in Portugal it has a little school of its own under Eugenio de Castro. I even saw some faint stirrings that way in Spain.”

Symons should have added the United States. Or could he in 1899? There were intelligent and sympathetic reports of the French movement very early. T. S. Perry wrote on “The Latest Literary Fashion in France” in The Cosmopolitan (1892), T. Child on “Literary Paris—The New Poetry” in Harper’s (1896), and Aline Gorren on “The French Symbolists” in Scribner’s (1893). The almost forgotten Vance Thompson, who, fresh from Paris, edited the oddly named review M’lle New York , wrote several perceptive essays, mainly on Mallarmé in 1895 (reprinted in French Portraits , 1900) which convey some accurate information on his theories and even attempt an explication of his poetry with some success. But only James Huneker became the main importer of recent French literature into the United States. In 1896 he defended the French symbolists against the slurs in Max Nordau’s silly Entartung and began to write a long series of articles on Maeterlinck, Laforgue, and many others, not bothering to conceal his dependence on his French master, Remy de Gourmont, to whom he dedicated his book of essays Visionaries (1905). But the actual impact of French symbolist poetry on American writing was greatly delayed. René Taupin, in his L’Influence du symoblisme français sur la poésie américaine (1929), traced some echoes in forgotten American versifiers of the turn of the century, but only two Americans living then in England, Ezra Pound around 1908 and T. S. Eliot around 1914, reflect the French influence in significant poetry.

More recently and in retrospect one hears of a symbolist period in American literature: Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens are its main poets; Henry James, Faulkner, and O’Neill, in very different ways and in different stages of their career, show marked affinities with its techniques and outlook. Edmund Wilson’s Axel’s Castle (1931) was apparently the very first book which definitely conceived of symbolism as an international movement and singled out Yeats, Joyce, Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Valéry, Proust, and Thomas Mann as examples of a movement which, he believed, had come to an end at the time of his writing. Here we find the conception formulated which, very generally, is the thesis of this paper and the assumption of many historians since Wilson’s sketch. Wilson’s sources were the writings of Huneker, whom he admired greatly, and the instruction in French literature he received in Princeton from Christian Gauss. But the insight into the unity and continuity of the international movement and the selection of the great names was his own. We might only deplore the inclusion of Gertrude Stein. But I find it difficult to believe that Wilson’s book could have had any influence outside the English-speaking world.

In the United States Wilson’s reasonable and moderate plea for an international movement was soon displaced by attempts to make the whole of the American literary tradition symbolist. F. O. Matthiessen’s The American Renaissance (1941) is based on a distinction between symbol and allegory very much in the terms of the distinction introduced by Goethe. Allegory appears as inferior to symbol: Hawthorne inferior to Melville. But in Charles Feidelson’s Symbolism and American Literature (1956) the distinction between modern symbolism and the use of symbols by romantic authors is completely obliterated. Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, and Whitman appear as pure symbolists avant la lettre , and their ancestry is traced back to the Puritans, who paradoxically appear as incomplete, frustrated symbolists. It can be rightly objected that the old Puritans were sharply inimical to images and symbols and that there is a gulf between the religious conception of signs of God’s Providence and the aesthetic use of symbols in the novels of Hawthorne and Melville and even in the Platonizing aesthetics of Emerson.

The symbolist conception of American literature is still prevalent today. It owes its dominance to the attempt to exalt the great American writers to myth-makers and providers of a substitute religion. James Baird, in Ishmael (1956), puts it unabashedly. Melville is “the supreme example of the artistic creator engaged in the act of making new symbols to replace the ‘lost’ symbols of Protestant Christianity.” A very active trend in American criticism expanded symbolist interpretation to all types and periods of literature, imposing it on writings which have no such meaning or have to be twisted to assume it. Harry Levin rightly complained in an address, “ Symbolism and Fiction” (1956), that “every hero may seem to have a thousand faces; every heroine may be a white goddess incognita ; every fishing trip turns out to be another quest for the Holy Grail.” The impact of ideas from the Cambridge anthropologists and from Carl Jung is obvious. In the study of medieval texts a renewed interest in the fourfold levels of meaning in Dante’s letter to Can Grande has persuaded a whole group of American scholars, mainly under the influence of D. W. Robertson, to interpret or misinterpret Chaucer, the Pearl poet, and Langland in these terms. They should bear in mind that Thomas Aquinas recognized only a literal sense in a work invented by human industry and that he reserved the other three senses for Scripture. The symbolist interpretation reaches heights of ingenuity in the writing of Northrop Frye, who began with a book on Blake and, in The Anatomy of Criticism (1957), conceived of the whole of literature as a selfenclosed system of symbols and myths, “existing in its own universe, no longer a commentary on life or reality, but containing life and reality in a system of verbal relationships.” In this grandiose conception all distinctions between periods and styles are abolished: “the literary universe is a universe in which everything is potentially identical with everything else.” Hence the old distinctions between myth, symbol, and allegory disappear. One of Frye’s followers, Angus Fletcher, in his book on Allegory (1964), exalts allegory as the central procedure of art, while Frye still holds fast to symbolism, recognizing that “the critics are often prejudiced against allegory without knowing the real reason, which is that continuous allegory prescribes the direction of his commentary, and so restricts his freedom.”

The story of the spread of symbolism is very different in other countries. The effect in Italy was ostensibly rather small. Soffici’s pamphlet on Rimbaud in 1911 is usually considered the beginning of the French symbolist influence, but there was an early propagandist for Mallarmé, Vittorio Pica, who was heavily dependent on French sources, particularly Téodor de Wyzéwa. His articles, in the Gazetta letteraria (1885–86), on the French poets do not use the term; but in 1896 he replaced “decadent” and “Byzantine” by “symbolist.” D’Annunzio, who knew and used some French symbolists, would be classed as “decadent” today, and the poets around Ungaretti and Montale as “hermetic.” In a recent book by Mario Luzi, L’Idea simbolista (1959), Pascoli, Dino Campana, and Arturo Onofri are called symbolist poets, but Luzi uses the term so widely that he begins his anthology of symbolism with Hölderlin and Novalis, Coleridge and Wordsworth, and can include Poe, Browning, Pat- more, Swinburne, Hopkins, and Francis Thompson among its precursors. Still, his list of symbolist poets, French, Russian, English, German, Spanish, and Greek, is, on the whole, reasonable. Onofri was certainly strongly influenced by Mallarmé and later by Rudolf Steiner; Pascoli, however, seems to me no symbolist in his poetry, though he gave extremely symbolist interpretations of Dante. It might be wiser to think of “ermetismo” as the Italian name for symbolism: Montale and possibly Dino Campana are genuine symbolists.

While symbolism, at least as a definite school or movement, was absent in Italy, it is central in the history of Spanish poetry. The Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío initiated it after his short stay in Paris in 1892. He wrote poems under the symbolist influence and addressed, for instance, a fervent hymn to Verlaine. The influence of French symbolist poetry changed completely the oratorical or popular style of Spanish lyrical poetry. The closeness of Guillén to Mallarmé and Valéry seems too obvious to deny, and the Uruguayan poet Julio Herrera y Reissig (1873–1909) is clearly in the symbolist tradition, often of the obscurest manner. Still, the Spanish critics favor the term “Modernismo,” which is used sometimes so inclusively that it covers all modern Spanish poetry and even the socalled “generation of 1898,” the prose writers Azorín, Baroja, and Unamuno, whose associations with symbolism were quite tenuous. “Symbolism” can apply only to one trend in modern Spanish literature, as the romantic popular tradition was stronger there than elsewhere. García Lorca’s poetry can serve as the best known example of the peculiar Spanish synthesis of the folksy and the symbolical, the gypsy song and the myth. Still, the continuity from Darío to Jiménez, Antonio Machado, Alberti, and then to Guillén seems to me evident. Jorge Guillén in his Harvard lectures, Language and Poetry (1961), finds “no label convincing.” “A period look,” he argues, does not signify a “group style.” In Spain there were, he thinks, fewer “isms” than elsewhere and the break with the past was far less abrupt. He reflects that “any name seeking to give unity to a historical period is the invention of posterity.” But while eschewing the term “symbolism,” he characterizes himself and his contemporaries well enough by expounding their common creed: their belief in the marriage of Idea and music—in short, their belief in the ideal of Mallarmé. Following a vague suggestion made by Remy de Gourmont, the rediscovery of Góngora by Ortega y Gasset, Gerardo Diego, Dámaso Alonso, and Alfonso Reyes around 1927 fits into the picture: they couple Góngora and Mallarmé as the two poets who in the history of all poetry have gone furthest in the search for absolute poetry, for the quintessence of the poetic.

In Germany the spread of symbolism was far less complete than Symons assumed in 1899. Stefan George had come to Paris in 1889, had visited Mallarmé and met many poets, but after his return to Germany he avoided, I assume deliberately, the term “symbolism” for himself and his circle. He translated a selection from Baudelaire (1891) and smaller samples from Mallarmé, Verlaine, and Régnier (in Zeitgenössische Dichter , 1905), but his own poetry does not, I think, show very close parallels to the French masters. Oddly enough, the poems of Vielé-Griffin seem to have left the most clearly discernible traces on George’s own writings. As early as 1892 one of George’s adherents, Carl August Klein, protested in George’s periodical, Blätter für die Kunst , against the view of George’s dependence on the French. Wagner, Nietzsche, Böcklin, and Klinger, he says, show that there is an indigenous opposition to naturalism in Germany as everywhere in the West. George himself spoke later of the French poets as his “former allies,” and in Gundolf’s authoritative book on George the French influence is minimized, if not completely denied. Among the theorists of the George circle Friedrich Gundolf had the strongest symbolist leanings: Shakspeare und der deutsche Geist (1911) and Goethe (1916) are based on the distinction of symbolallegory, with symbol always the higher term. Still, the term symbolism did not catch on in Germany as a name for any specific group, though Hofmannsthal— e.g. in “Das Gespräch über Gedichte” of 1903—proclaimed the symbol the one element necessary in poetry. Later, the influence of Rimbaud— apparently largely in German translation—Iron Georg Trakl has been demonstrated with certainty. But if we examine German books on twentiethcentury literature, symbolism seems rarely used. I found a section so called in Willi Duwe’s Die Dichtung des 20. Jahrhunderts (1936) which includes Hofmannsthal, Dauthendey, Calé, Rilke, and George, while E. H. Lüth’s Literatur als Geschichte ( Deutsche Dichtung von 1885 bis 1947 ), published in 1947, treats the same poets under the label “Neuromantik und Impressionismus.” Later, however, we find a section, “Parasymbolismus,” which deals with Musil and Broch. Hugo Friedrich, in his Struktur der modernen Lyrik (1956), avoids the terms and argues that the quick succession of modernist styles—dadaism, surrealism, futurism, expressionism, unanimism hermetism, and so on—creates an optical illusion which hides the fact of a direct continuity through Mallarmé, Valéry, Guillén, Ungaretti, and Eliot. The little anthology in the back of the book adds St. John Perse, Jiménez, García Lorca, Alberti, and Montale to these names. Friedrich’s list seems to me the list of the main symbolist poets, even though Friedrich objects to the name. Clearly, German literary scholarship has not been converted to the term, though Wolfgang Kayser’s article “Der europäische Symbolismus” (1953) had pleaded for a wide concept in which he included, in addition to the French poets, D’Annunzio, Yeats, Valéry, Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Faulkner.

In Russia we find the strongest symbolist group of poets who called themselves that. The close links with Paris at that time may help to explain this, or possibly also the strong consciousness of a tradition of symbolism in the Russian Church and in some of the Orthodox thinkers of the immediate past. Vladimir Solovëv was regarded as a precursor. In 1892 Zinaida Vengerova wrote a sympathetic account of the French symbolists for Vestnik Evropy , while in the following year Max Nordau’s Entartung caused a sensation by its satirical account of recent French poetry which had repercussions on Tolstoy’s What is Art?, as late as 1898. Bryusov emerged as the leading symbolist poet: he translated Maeterlinck’s L’Intruse and wrote a poem “Iz Rimbaud” as early as 1892. In 1894 he published two little volumes under the title Russkie simvolisty . That year Bryusov wrote poems with titles such as “In the Spirit of the French Symbolists” and “In the Manner of Stéphane Mallarmé” (though these were not published till 1935) and brought out a translation of Verlaine’s Romances sans paroles . Bryusov had later contacts with René Ghil, Mallarmé’s pupil, and derived from him the idea of “instrumentation” in poetry which was to play such a great role in the theories of the Russian Formalists. In the meantime Dimitri Merezhkovsky had, in 1893, published a manifesto: On the Causes of the Decline and the New Trends of Contemporary Russian Literature , which recommended symbolism, though Merezhkovsky appealed to the Germans: to Goethe and the romantics rather than to the French. Merezhkovsky’s pamphlet foreshadows the split in the Russian symbolist movement. The younger men, Blok and Vyacheslav Ivanov as well as Bely, distanced themselves from Bryusov and Balmont. Blok, in an early diary (1901–02), condemned Bryusov as decadent and opposed to his Parisian symbolism his own, Russian, rooted in the poetry of Tyutchev, Fet, Polonsky, and Solovëv. Vyacheslav Ivanov in 1910 shared Blok’s view. The French influence seemed to him “adolescently unreasonable and, in fact, not very fertile,” while his own symbolism appealed to Russian nationalism and to the general mystical tradition. Later Bely was to add occultism and Rudolf Steiner and his “anthroposophy.” The group of poets who called themselves “Acmeists” (Gulmilëv, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelshtam) was a direct outgrowth of symbolism. The mere fact that they appealed to the early symbolist Innokenty Annensky shows the continuity with symbolism in spite of their distaste for the occult and their emphasis on what they thought of as classical clarity. Symbolism dominates Russian poetry between about 1892 and 1914, when Futurism emerged as a slogan and the Russian Formalists attacked the whole concept of poetry as imagery.

If we glance at the other Slavic countries we are struck by the diversity of their reactions. Poland was informed early on about the French movement, and Polish poetry was influenced by the French symbolist movement, but the term “Ml⁄asoda Polska” was preferred. In Wilhelm Feldmann’s Wspól⁄- czesna literatura polska (1905) contemporary poetry is discussed as “decadentism,” but Wyspian´- ski (a symbolist if ever there was one) appears under the chapter heading: “On the Heights of Romanticism.” All the histories of Polish literature I have seen speak of “Modernism,” “Decadentism,” “Idealism,” “Neo-romanticism,” and occasionally call a poet such as Miriam (Zenon Przesmycki) a symbolist, but they never seem to use the term as a general name for a period in Polish literature.

In Czech literature the situation was more like that in Russia: Brˇezina, Sova, and Hlavácˇek were called symbolists, and the idea of a school or at least a group of Czech symbolist poets is firmly established. The term “Moderna” (possibly because of the periodical Moderní Revue , founded in 1894) is definitely associated with decadentism, fin de siècle, a group represented by Arnosˇt Procházka. A hymnical, optimistic, even chiliastic poet such as Brˇezina cannot and could not be classed with them. The great critic F. X. Sˇalda wrote of the “school of symbolists” as early as 1891, calling Verlaine, Villiers, and Mallarmé its masters but denied that there is a school of symbolists with dogmas, codices, and manifestoes. His very first important article, “Synthetism in the New Art” (1892), expounded the aesthetics of Morice and Hennequin for the benefit of the Czechs, then still mainly dependent on German models.

The unevenness of the penetration of both the influence of the French movement and very strikingly of the acceptance of the term raises the question whether we can account for these differences in causal terms. It sounds heretical or obscurantist in this age of scientific explanation to ascribe much to chance, to casual contacts, and to personal predilections. Why was the term so immensely successful in France, in the United States, and in Russia, less so in England and Spain, and hardly at all in Italy and Germany? In Germany there was even the tradition of the continuous debate about symbol since Goethe and Schelling; before the French movement Friedrich Theodor Vischer discussed the symbol elaborately and still the term did not catch on. One can think of all kinds of explanations: a deliberate decision by the poets to distance themselves from the French developments; or the success of the terms “Die Moderne” and “Neuromantik.” Still, the very number of such explanations suggests that the variables are so great that we cannot account for these divergencies in any systematic manner.

If we, at long last, turn to the central question of what the exact content of the term is, we must obviously distinguish among the four concentric circles defining its scope. At its narrowest, “symbolism” refers to the French group which called itself “symbolist” in 1886. Its theory was rather rudimentary. These poets mainly wanted poetry to be non-rhetorical—i.e. they asked for a break with the tradition of Hugo and the Parnassiens. They wanted words not merely to state but to suggest; they wanted to use metaphors, allegories, and symbols not only as decorations but as organizing principles of their poems; they wanted their verse to be “musical,” in practice to stop using the oratorical cadences of the French alexandrines, and in some cases to break completely with rhyme. Free verse— whose invention is usually ascribed to Gustave Kahn—was possibly the most enduring achievement which has survived all vicissitudes of style. Kahn himself in 1894 summed up the doctrine simply as “antinaturalism, antiprosaism in poetry, a search for freedom in the efforts in art, in reaction against the regimentation of the Parnasse and the naturalists.” This sounds very meager today: freedom from restrictions has been, after all, the slogan of a great many movements in art.

It is better to think of “symbolism” in a wider sense: as the broad movement in France from Nerval and Baudelaire to Claudel and Valéry. We can restate the theories propounded and will be confronted by an enormous variety. We can characterize it more concretely and say, for example, that in symbolist poetry the image becomes “thing.” The relation of tenor and vehicle in the metaphor is reversed. The utterance is divorced, we may add, from the situation: time and place, history and society, are played down. The inner world, the durée , in the Bergsonian sense, is represented or often merely hinted at as “it,” the thing or the person hidden. One could say that the grammatical predicate has become the subject. Clearly such poetry can easily be justified by an occult view of the world. But this is not necessary: it might imply a feeling for analogy, for a web of correspondences, a rhetoric of metamorphoses in which everything reflects everything else. Hence the great role of synesthesia, which, though rooted in physiological facts and found all over the history of poetry, became at that time merely a stylistic device, a mannerism easily imitated and transmitted. This characterization could be elaborated considerably if we bear in mind that style and world view go together and only together can define the character of a period or even of a single poet.

Let me try to show, at least, how diverse and even incompatible were the theories of two such related poets as Baudelaire and Mallarmé. Baudelaire’s aesthetic is mainly “romantic,” not in the sense of emotionalism, nature worship, and exaltation of the ego, central in French romanticism, but rather in the English and German tradition of a glorification of creative imagination, a rhetoric of metamorphoses and universal analogy. Though there are subsidiary strands in Baudelaire’s aesthetics, at his finest he grasps the role of imagination, “constructive imagination,” as he calls it in a term ultimately derived from Coleridge. It gives a metaphysical meaning, “a positive relation with the infinite.” Art is another cosmos which transforms and hence humanizes nature. By his creation the artist abolishes the gulf between subject and object, man and nature. Art is “to create a suggestive magic containing at one and the same time the object and the subject, the external world and the artist himself.”

Mallarmé says almost the opposite in spite of some superficial resemblances and the common attachment to Poe and Wagner. Mallarmé was the first poet radically discontent with the ordinary language of communication; he attempted to construe an entirely separate language of poetry far more consistently than older cultivators of “poetic diction” such as the practitioners of trobar clus , or Góngora, or Mallarmé’s contemporary, Gerard Manley Hopkins. His aim of transforming language was, no doubt, in part negative: to exclude society, nature, and the person of the poet himself.

But it was also positive: language was again to become “real,” language was to be magic, words were to become things. But this is not, I think, sufficient reason to call Mallarmé a mystic. Even the depersonalization he requires is not mystical. Impersonality is rather objectivity, Truth. Art reaches for the Idea, which is ultimately inexpressible, because so abstract and general as to be devoid of any concrete traits. The term “flower” seems to him poetic because it suggests the “one, absent from all bouquets.” Art thus can only hint and suggest, not transform as it should in Baudelaire. The “symbol” is only one device to achieve this effect. The so-called “negative” aesthetics of Mallarmé is thus nothing obscure. It had its psychological basis in a feeling of sterility, impotence, and final silence. He was a perfectionist who proposed something impossible of fulfillment: the book to end all books. “Everything on earth exists to be contained in a book.” Like many poets before him, Mallarmé wants to express the mystery of the universe but feels that this mystery is not only insoluble and immensely dark but also hollow, empty, silent, Nothingness itself. There seems no need to appeal to Buddhism, Hegel, Schopenhauer, or Wagner to account for this. The atmosphere of nineteenth-century pessimism and the general Neoplatonic tradition in aesthetics suffice. Art searches for the Absolute but despairs of ever reaching it. The essence of the world is Nothingness, and the poet can only speak of this Nothingness. Art alone survives in the universe. Man’s main vocation is to be an artist, a poet, who can save something from the general wreckage of time. The work or, in Mallarmé’s terms, the Book is suspended over the Void, the silent godless Nothingness. Poetry is resolutely cut off from concrete reality, from the expression of the personality of the poet, from any rhetoric or emotion, and becomes only a Sign, signifying Nothing. In Baudelaire, on the other hand, poetry transforms nature, extracts flowers from evil, creates a new myth, reconciles man and nature.

But if we examine the actual verse of the symbolists of this period, we cannot be content with formulas either of creative imagination, of suggestion, or of pure or absolute poetry.

On the third wider circle of abstraction we can apply the term to the whole period on an international scale. Every such term is arbitrary, but symbolism can be defended as rooted in the concepts of the period, as distinct in meaning, and as clearly setting off the period from that preceding it: realism or naturalism. The difference from romanticism may be less certainly implied. Obviously there is a continuity with romanticism, and particularly German romanticism, also in France, as has been recently argued again by Werner Vordtriede in his Novalis und die französischen Symbolisten (1963). The direct contact of the French with the German romantics came late and should not be overrated. Jean Thorel, in “Les Romantiques allemandes et les symbolistes français,” seems to have been the first to point out the relation. Maeterlinck’s article on Novalis (1894) and his little anthology (1896) came late in the movement. But Wagner of course mediated between the symbolists and German mythology, though Mallarmé’s attitude, admiring toward the music, was tinged with irony for Wagner’s subject matter. Early in the century Heine, a romantique défroqué as he called himself, played the role of an intermediary which, to my mind, has been exaggerated in Kurt Weinberg’s study, Henri Heine: Héraut du symbolisme français (1954). E. T. A. Hoffmann, we should not forget, was widely translated into French and could supply occult motifs, a transcendental view of music, and the theory and practice of synesthesia.

Possibly even more important were the indirect contacts through English writers: through Carlyle’s chapter on symbolism in Sartor Resartus and his essay on Novalis; through Coleridge, from whom, through another intermediary, Mrs. Crowe, Baudelaire drew his definition of creative imagination; and through Emerson, who was translated by Edgar Quinet.

Also, French thinkers of the early nineteenth century knew the theory of symbolism at least, from the wide application to all the religions of the world made by Creuzer, whose Symbolik was translated into French in 1825. Pierre Leroux used the idea of “symbolic poetry” prominently in the early thirties. There was Edgar Allan Poe, who drew on Coleridge and A. W. Schlegel and seemed so closely to anticipate Baudelaire’s views that Baudelaire quoted him as if he were Poe himself, sometimes dropping all quotations marks.

The enormous influence of Poe on the French demonstrates, however, most clearly the difference between romanticism and symbolism. Poe is far from being a representative of the romantic worldview or of the romantic aesthetic, in which the imagination is conceived as transforming nature. Poe has been aptly described as an “angel in a machine”: he combines a faith in technique and even technology, a distrust of inspiration, a rationalistic eighteenth-century mind with a vague occult belief in “supernal” beauty. The distrust of inspiration, an enmity to nature, is the crucial point which sets off symbolism from romanticism. Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Valéry all share it; while Rilke, a symbolist in many of his procedures and views, appears as highly romantic in his reliance on moments of inspiration. This is why Hugo Friedrich excludes him from his book on the modern lyric and even disparages him in a harsh passage. This is why the attempt to make Mallarmé a spiritual descendant of Novalis, as Vordtriede tried, must fail. Mallarmé, one might grant, aims at transcendence, but it is an empty transcendence, while Novalis rapturously adores the unity of the mysterious universe. In short, the romantics were Rousseauists; the symbolists, beginning with Baudelaire, believe in the fall of man or, if they do not use the religious phraseology, know that man is limited and is not, as Novalis believed, the Messiah of nature. The end of the romantic period is clearly marked by the victory of positivism and scientism, which soon led to disillusionment and pessimism. Most symbolists were non-Christians and even atheists, even if they tried to find a new religion in occultism or flirted with Oriental religions. They were pessimists who need not have read Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann, as Laforgue did, to succumb to the mood of decadence, fin de siècle, Götterdämmerung , or the death of God prophesied by Nietzsche.

Symbolism is also clearly set off from the new avant-garde movements after 1914: futurism, cubism, surrealism, expressionism, and so on. There the faith in language has crumbled completely, while in Mallarmé and Valéry language preserves its cognitive and even magic power: Valéry’s collection of poems is rightly called Charmes . Orpheus is the mythological hero of the poet, charming the animals, trees, and even stones. With more recent art the view of analogy disappears: Kafka has nothing of it. Postsymbolist art is abstract and allegorical rather than symbolic. The image, in surrealism, has no beyond: it wells, at most, from the subconscious of the individual.

Finally, there is the highest abstraction, the wide largest circle: the use of “symbolism” in all literature, of all ages. But then the term, broken loose from its historical moorings, lacks concrete content and remains merely the name for a phenomenon almost universal in all art.

These reflections must lead to what only can be a recommendation, to use the third sense of our term, to call the period of European literature roughly between 1885 and 1914 “symbolism,” to see it as an international movement which radiated originally from France but produced great writers and great poetry also elsewhere. In Ireland and England: Yeats and Eliot; in the United States: Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane; in Germany: George, Rilke, and Hofmannsthal; in Russia: Blok, Ivanov, and Bely; in Spain and South America: Darío, Machado, and Guillén. If we, as we should, extend the meaning of symbolism to prose, we can see it clearly in the late Henry James, in Joyce, in the later Thomas Mann, in Proust, in the early Gide and Faulkner, in D. H. Lawrence; and if we add the drama, we recognize it in the later stages of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Hauptmann, and in O’Neill. There is symbolist criticism of distinction: an aesthetics in Mallarmé and Valéry, a looser creed in Remy de Gourmont, in Eliot, and in Yeats, and a flourishing school of symbolist interpretation, particularly in the United States. Much of the French “new criticism” is frankly symbolist. Roland Barthes’ new pamphlet, Critique et vérité (1966), pleads for a complete liberty of symbolist interpretation.

Still, we must not forget our initial reminder. A period concept can never exhaust its meaning. It is not a class concept of which the individual works are cases. It is a regulative idea: it struggles with preceding and following ideals of art. In the time under consideration the strength of the survivals was particularly great: Hauptmann’s Die Weber was performed in the same year (1892) as Blätter für die Kunst began to appear; Blok’s Poems on the Beautiful Lady were written in the same year (1901) as Gorky’s Lower Depths . Within the same author and even within the same work of art the struggle was waged at times. Edmond Jaloux called Joyce “at the same time a realist and a symbolist.” The same is true of Proust and Mann. Ulysses combines symbolism and naturalism, as no other book of the time, into a synthesis of grand proportion and strong tension. In Trieste Joyce lectured on two English writers and on two English writers alone: they were characteristically Defoe and Blake.

As agreement on the main periods of European literature grows, so agreement to add the period term “symbolism” to the five periods now accepted should increase. But even were a different term to be victorious (though none I can think of seems to me even remotely preferable), we should always recognize that such a term has fulfilled its function as a tool of historiography if it has made us think not only about individual works and authors but about schools, trends, and movements and their international expansion. Symbolism is at least a literary term which will help us to counteract the dependence of much literary history on periodization derived from political and social history (such as the term “ Imperialism” used in Marxist literary histories, which is perfectly meaningless applied to poetry at that time). Symbolism is a term (and I am quoting the words I applied to baroque in 1945) “which prepares for synthesis, draws our minds away from the mere accumulation of observations and facts, and paves the way for a future history of literature as a fine art.”

Source: Rene Wellek, “The Term and Concept of Symbolism in Literary History,” in Discriminations: Further Concepts of Criticism , Yale University Press, 1970, pp. 90–121.

"Symbolism - The Term and Concept of Symbolism in Literary History." Literary Movements for Students, Vol. 1. Gale Cengage, 27 June 2024 <https://www.enotes.com/topics/symbolism/critical-essays/essays-criticism#critical-essays-essays-criticism-term-concept-symbolism-literary-history>

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Analysis of Symbolism in The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: analysis

• Poe, E. A. (1845). The Raven. The American Whig Review, 15(11), 1-6.
• Abu-Taieh, E., & Al-Jarrah, R. (2016). The use of symbols in Edgar Allan Poe's selected poems and short stories: A literary analysis study. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research, 6(1), 14-28.
• Barron, J. W. (1989). “The Raven” and the cult of melancholia. The Edgar Allan Poe Review, 1(1), 27-34.
• Buranelli, V. (1961). The Raven and the Nightingale. Modern Language Notes, 76(2), 113-121.
• Fleissner, R. F. (1995). The raven and the nightingale: Poe, Keats, and the traditions of poetic convention. Poetics Today, 16(4), 577-602.
• Gruesser, J. C. (1984). The talk of the raven: Poe's theory of composition as revealed in "The Philosophy of Composition". American Literature, 56(4), 549-562.

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Essays on Symbolism

Symbolism essay topics and outline examples, essay title 1: the power of symbolism in literature.

Thesis Statement: Symbolism serves as a powerful literary device, allowing authors to convey deeper meanings, emotions, and themes in their works, enriching the reader's experience and interpretation.

• Introduction
• Defining Symbolism in Literature
• Types of Literary Symbols
• The Function of Symbols in Storytelling
• Analysis of Symbolism in Select Literary Works

Essay Title 2: Religious Symbolism in Art and Culture

Thesis Statement: Religious symbolism has played a profound role in art and culture, reflecting spiritual beliefs, values, and cultural narratives across different societies and time periods.

• Exploring Religious Symbols and Their Significance
• Examples of Religious Symbolism in Art and Architecture
• The Influence of Religious Symbols on Cultural Practices
• Interpreting the Cross-Cultural Impact of Religious Symbolism

Essay Title 3: Symbolism in Film: Visual Storytelling Beyond Words

Thesis Statement: Symbolism in film allows directors to convey complex ideas, emotions, and themes through visual and auditory cues, adding depth to cinematic narratives and enhancing viewer engagement.

• The Role of Visual and Auditory Symbols in Film
• Symbolism in Iconic Movie Scenes
• The Connection Between Film Symbolism and Viewer Interpretation
• Exploring Symbolism in a Range of Film Genres

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Symbolism refers to a literary technique used to imbue objects, actions, or characters with deeper, abstract meanings that extend beyond their literal representation. It is a creative device employed by writers to convey complex ideas, emotions, or themes in a condensed and evocative manner. Through the use of symbols, writers invite readers to delve into the layers of meaning within a narrative or poem, encouraging them to interpret and uncover hidden messages.

The literary device of symbolism has its origins in ancient civilizations, where symbols were used to represent abstract concepts or ideas. Symbolism can be traced back to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, where symbols were employed in religious rituals, mythologies, and artistic expressions. In Western literature, the concept of symbolism gained prominence during the Romantic era in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Romantic poets and writers, such as William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, utilized symbols to convey deeper meanings and evoke emotional responses in their works. However, the formalization and recognition of symbolism as a distinct literary device occurred in the late 19th century with the emergence of the Symbolist movement in France. Symbolist poets, including Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé, embraced symbolism as a means to explore the realm of the subconscious, spirituality, and the metaphysical. They sought to convey complex ideas and emotions through carefully crafted symbols and metaphors.

William Shakespeare: The celebrated playwright often incorporated symbolism in his works. For example, in his tragedy "Macbeth," the symbol of blood represents guilt and the characters' moral decay. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Known for his novel "The Scarlet Letter," Hawthorne used symbolism extensively. The scarlet letter itself becomes a symbol of shame and societal judgment. F. Scott Fitzgerald: In his classic novel "The Great Gatsby," Fitzgerald skillfully employs symbols such as the green light, the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, and the Valley of Ashes to convey themes of wealth, corruption, and the American Dream. J.R.R. Tolkien: The author of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy used symbols to enrich his fantastical world. The One Ring is a potent symbol of power and corruption, while the White Tree of Gondor represents hope and renewal. Emily Dickinson: The renowned poet often employed symbolism in her works, using objects and natural elements to explore profound themes of love, death, and nature.

The Rose: Often associated with love and beauty, the rose symbolizes passion, desire, and romance. It can also represent fragility or the balance between pleasure and pain. The Dove: A universal symbol of peace and purity, the dove is frequently used to represent harmony, innocence, and hope. It can appear in works dealing with themes of reconciliation and the search for tranquility. The Cross: As a religious symbol, the cross signifies sacrifice, redemption, and faith. It often appears in works with themes of spirituality, salvation, or moral struggles. The Journey: Symbolizing transformation and personal growth, the journey represents the protagonist's quest for self-discovery, knowledge, or enlightenment. It can be a physical or metaphorical journey. The Mirror: Reflecting both the literal and metaphorical sense, the mirror represents self-reflection, self-awareness, and truth. It can delve into themes of identity, perception, and the search for inner meaning. The Raven: Often associated with darkness and mystery, the raven symbolizes death, loss, and the haunting presence of the unknown. It can evoke a sense of foreboding or symbolize the protagonist's descent into madness.

Representation: Symbolism involves the use of objects, characters, or elements to represent abstract ideas, concepts, or themes. By imbuing these symbols with meaning, writers can add layers of depth to their storytelling. Multiple Interpretations: Symbols are open to interpretation, allowing readers to derive their own meanings from them. They can evoke different emotions and resonate with readers in unique ways, making literature more subjective and thought-provoking. Enhancing Themes: Symbolism helps writers convey complex themes and ideas that may be difficult to express directly. Symbols serve as vehicles for exploring profound concepts such as love, death, spirituality, or societal issues, enabling a deeper understanding of the text. Engaging Imagery: Symbols often create vivid and memorable imagery in readers' minds. By using concrete and tangible objects to represent abstract concepts, writers can make their works more visually and emotionally captivating. Unifying Elements: Symbols can unify a literary work by recurring throughout the narrative, connecting various elements and creating cohesion. They provide a thread that ties different parts of the story together, reinforcing the central themes or motifs.

Depth and Complexity: Symbols add depth and complexity to a story, allowing authors to convey abstract or complex ideas that may be difficult to express directly. Symbols provide a means to explore emotions, themes, and concepts in a more nuanced and evocative way. Communication and Universality: Symbols have the power to transcend language and cultural barriers. They can communicate ideas and emotions universally, allowing readers from different backgrounds to connect and interpret the text on a deeper level. Multiple Layers of Meaning: Symbols offer multiple layers of meaning, inviting readers to engage in a deeper exploration of the text. They can represent different ideas or evoke various emotions, allowing for rich interpretation and analysis. Engagement and Interpretation: Symbols engage readers by requiring active interpretation. They invite readers to analyze, speculate, and search for hidden meanings, fostering a deeper engagement with the text. Evoking Imagery and Emotion: Symbols have the ability to create vivid imagery and evoke strong emotions. They can enhance the sensory experience of reading by appealing to the reader's senses and emotions. Memorable and Lasting Impact: Symbols can leave a lasting impact on readers. They can resonate with readers long after they finish the book, sparking contemplation and discussion.

1. Jones, E. (1918). The theory of symbolism. British Journal of Psychology, 9(2), 181. (https://www.proquest.com/openview/2b14884988f835d9d43c8d43c338ae64/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1818401) 2. Chadwick, C. (2017). Symbolism. Routledge. (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315270418/symbolism-charles-chadwick) 3. Cohen, A. (1979). Political symbolism. Annual Review of Anthropology, 8(1), 87-113. (https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.an.08.100179.000511?journalCode=anthro) 4. Deal, T. E. (1985). The symbolism of effective schools. The Elementary School Journal, 85(5), 601-620. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/461424?journalCode=esj) 5. Sapir, E. (1929). A study in phonetic symbolism. Journal of experimental psychology, 12(3), 225. (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1929-04177-001) 6. Walzer, M. (1967). On the role of symbolism in political thought. Political Science Quarterly, 82(2), 191-204. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2147214) 7. Yeats, W. B., & Yeats, W. B. (1961). The Symbolism of Poetry. Essays and Introductions, 153-164. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-00618-2_10) 8. Ladner, G. B. (1979). Medieval and modern understanding of symbolism: a comparison. Speculum, 54(2), 223-256. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.2307/2854972) 9. Evarts, A. B. (1919). Color symbolism. Psychoanalytic Review, 6(2), 124-157. (https://pep-web.org/browse/document/psar.006.0124a) 10. Plog, S. (2003). Exploring the ubiquitous through the unusual: color symbolism in Pueblo black-on-white pottery. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/article/abs/exploring-the-ubiquitous-through-the-unusual-color-symbolism-in-pueblo-blackonwhite-pottery/6CC6A0F2C99947B0278AAA41CEF413D American Antiquity, 68(4), 665-695.

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Symbolism Essay

(Updated on September 19, 2023)

A symbolism essay is one that is commonly assigned in high school and college literature courses.  Symbolism essays require the writer to analyze the many levels of symbolism in a text.  A symbol is, in essence, an object or person who stands for or represents something else.  For instance, a cross stands for Christianity.  In literature, symbolism is rarely this simple.  Literary symbols are more nuanced and less obvious.  This is why literary symbolism is often worthy of literary essays: it's complex.  Often, a literary symbol can be interpreted in multiple ways.  Therefore, the task of a writer of a symbolism essay is to identify in what way or ways that symbol can be interpreted, use text-focused evidence to convince the reader of the validity of that interpretation, and then discuss what the symbols mean in both the context of the story and outside the context of the story.

Following an extensive text-focused discussion of what the symbol indicates in the context of the text, it may be appropriate for the writer to suggest what the symbol indicates outside the context of the text, i.e., what the symbol suggests about the text's theme.  Sometimes, literary symbols are only pertinent within their context, but often, literary symbols are meant to be interpreted as representations of people, ideas, or other entities in life .  One can understand this application of symbolism by thinking about classic fables or fairy tales.  Take, for instance, the popular story recounting the race between a tortoise and a hare.  In this story, the tortoise, who is expected to lose the race because he/she is so slow, actually wins because he/she diligently applies himself/herself and stays focused on the race.  The faster hare loses because he/she is overly confident in his/her own abilities and therefore doesn't take the competition seriously.  One of the themes of this story is that diligence and focus trump natural ability.  In this story, the tortoise is a symbol for hard-working people who perhaps have inferior circumstances or talents when compared to others.  The tortoise is the quintessential underdog.  The hare represents people who are cocky about their abilities and therefore underestimate their competition.  This is a very basic example, but one that illustrates the way in which literary symbols go beyond the story to inform us about the theme of the story.  Every symbolism essay must discuss theme, as symbols are always related to a text's theme.

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Guest Essay

Today’s Teenagers Have Invented a Language That Captures the World Perfectly

By Stephen Marche

Mr. Marche is the author, most recently, of “The Next Civil War.”

My son just completed high school and when he leaves for college in the fall my life will change in ways I’m still struggling to contemplate. Among the things I’ll miss most are his lessons in teenage slang. My son has always been generous with me, and I’ve found the slang of his generation to be so much better and more useful than any that I’ve ever used. His slang has also offered me an accidental and useful portrait of how he and his generation see the world.

The primary value of slang has been to create linguistic shibboleths, a way to differentiate yourself quickly from other people. Sometimes the distinction was generational, sometimes it was racial, and sometimes it was ideological, but the slang itself was ultimately a form of social etiquette. From one generation to the next, the terms changed, but the meanings typically didn’t. New words were routinely adopted to express familiar concepts: one generation’s “cool” becomes another’s “dope” and so on.

Members of my son’s generation have a vastly superior approach to slang. They’ve devised a language that responds to the new and distinct reality they face.

Anyone with children, especially ones on the cusp of adulthood, has to reckon with the shameful fact that the world we’re leaving them is so much worse than the one we brought them into. My son’s slang reflects that: It’s a distinct language created for a society that’s characterized, online and off, by collapsing institutions, erosions in trust and a loss of faith in a shared sense of meaning.

“Mid” is an obvious example. I don’t think it even qualifies as teenage slang anymore — it’s too useful and, by now, too widespread. In my son’s usage, things that are mid are things that are essentially average or slightly below. You can’t really complain about them, but they produce no joy. They’re often the result of the refinement of market research to the exact level that tepid consumer acceptance is achieved. Everything in Starbucks falls into the category of “mid.” So does everything in an airport. It’s a brilliant, precise word for a world full of mild disappointments, where the corner bakery that used to do some things well and other things poorly has been reliably replaced by yet another Le Pain Quotidien.

“Glazed” has a similarly impressive precision. When my son describes something as glazed, it’s meant to signify not lying, exactly, or even exaggerating, but the act of positively spinning a judgment. “Glazed” indicates a gilding of information; sports commentary, for example, is 90 percent glaze. When Stephen A. Smith, the quintessential glazer, likens Anthony Edwards to Michael Jordan , a proper response might be “The Ant glazing is crazy.” But glaze is also the perfect description of the way social media works: The world you encounter online is perpetually glazed, with everything taking on an artificially positive, unreal and not entirely trustworthy gloss.

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