Aaron Papp
Dr. Bell
ENGL 1102
8 February 2013
Symbolism at Its Finest Many authors through time and through this day and age have used symbolism in their works. Critics may say there is too much symbolism in some works. There is never too much symbolism in a work. Symbolism enhances the characters, words, places, and objects to levels that a average work could not reach without the use of symbolism. The more symbolism an author uses, the more attached a reader becomes to the story. Look at August Wilson 's Gem Of the Ocean play. It is loaded with symbolism and has a deep meaning to the story. Every main character has something that symbolizes them. It shows the character 's back rounds and what they have been through. For example
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Caesar Wilks is practically a dictator in the play because he has a gun and a badge. Julius Caesar had a army to rule with, they had weapons also. Caesar Wilks orders people around, is disrespectful, boastful, and full of himself. Julius Caesar was not all of those things but some of them he was. I think Caesar Wilk 's own people will eventually turn against him, just as Marcus, Junius, and Brutus did against Julius. Caesar Wilks said, "He started running! With the loaf of bread under his arm! I had to shoot him. You can 't do nothing like that and get away with it” (36). That sounds like something a dictator would do. Kill a young man for only stealing a loaf of bread. It 's not right to kill a person for stealing a loaf of bread. Even if it was a eye for an eye society. Wilks had no right to shoot that young man. If lawmen were like that today we would not have a world overpopulation problem. Caesar Wilks has a out of control type dictatorship over the rest of the characters. On the contrary Eli is building a wall starting at the backside of the house. Eli 's wall symbolizes his duty as a care giver for the house and Aunt Ester. He wants to see if he can keep Caesar on the other side of the wall. Eli was Solly 's comrade in the Union Army and the underground railroad in the 1800s. During those times there was no sense of security for Eli. One day things would go as planned and the next he could be caught and killed. Everything he did then was a risk.
Many novels have used symbolism to express certain feelings and emotions in discreet ways. What is symbolism? "The practice of representing things by means of symbols or of attributing symbolic meanings or significance to objects, events, or relationships" (Dictionary.com). Numerous authors use the same denotations to illustrate different thoughts or ideas. Mark Twain uses various symbols, such as the river and the land to expose freedom and trouble in his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Symbolism is a major literary device that helps people see a book through symbols that often have a deeper meaning. A symbol is used to explain something in a different way, using images, objects, etc. instead of just saying it in words. As you search for a deeper meaning in a work of art or literature it can help you understand the authors intentions and the deeper significance of a work. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, symbols help reinforce the major themes of the book.
Symbolism is used in many ways and writers use symbolism to “enhance their writing.” It can give their work “more richness and color and can make the meaning of the work deeper.” In literary work the actions of the characters, words, action, place, or event has a deeper meaning in the context of the whole story. The reader needs to look see the little things like a dove symbolizes peace, or like the red rose stands for romance. Mostly everything can have a symbolism meaning to it. For instance the flag symbolizes freedom and the stars represent the states. Even some signs are symbols like when a beaker has a skull with a bones placed like an ‘x’ behind it symbolizes that it’s toxic or bad. When people see the red light when driving that’s
Symbolism is commonly used in many books, movies, etc. To put it simply, symbolism is when some sort of object or idea is used to symbolize feelings or emotions. For instance, bad weather can be used to symbolize a character’s feelings of sadness. In the novel “Tangerine”, symbolism is used many different times, but a prominent example in the novel is when Mr. Donnelly, a side character in the story, uses an imaginary porcelain plate to symbolize a local record he broke. As seen on Pages 274 and 275 in “Tangerine”, “So whenever I thought about the record, which was often, I imagined a fine porcelain plate…
Symbolism is usually used to represent things that are meaningful without actually saying so, you’ll sometimes have to read behind the lines. Symbolism can be used as an artistic or poetic way of writing to represent an idea. There is a lot of symbolism used in the novel “Kindred” by Octavia Butler, she uses symbolism through her character Dana’s constant physical and emotional pain, it’s a motif. The constant pain and abuse Dana goes through represents the fact that whenever Dana travels back in time and gets hurt weather emotionally or physically, she never comes back as she originally was, she brings back a reminder of the past with her.
Another symbol to acknowledge in the story is the serpent. The serpent came in the story in a stick figure way. “This is a dull pace for the beginning of a journey”. The sneaky serpent confided this saying to
Many authors use symbolism to help their readers grasp the concepts they are trying to convey. They take concrete items or ideas to represent something abstract.
Symbolism is the use of an object or a word to represent an abstract idea. It's often used by writers to represent a hidden message or a hint in a story. The short Stories " A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner and "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker are great examples of the use of symbolism. In "A Rose for Emily" Faulkner uses symbolism to create a Story about a woman called Emily whose life is surrounded by mysteries, especially after the death of her father and the disappearance of her beloved Homer. Falkner uses symbolism to hide several messages through the Story which, in my opinion, sounds very morbid as things happen. In "Everyday Use," Alice Walker symbolizes her messages through a beautiful detailed story where Mrs. Johnson also
Using symbolism can take your story to a whole new level by showing us how each character feels in additional it can make a person or even an objects stand out a whole lot more. In Eudora Welty they used symbolism in many different ways that you can even notice them right away.
The Great Gatsby is full of symbolism.The green light, the Valley of Ashes, and the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are just a few examples. In Thomas C. Foster’s book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, he writes about symbols and what they mean. The Rockpile in the literature book is another story that uses symbolism.
Symbolism, by definition, is when concrete people, places, or things are used to substitute or represent abstract ideas. Symbols for symbolism can be any object or thing in the story that the reader believes represents more than what it literally is. Authors use symbolism to hint about characters’ lives, and they also use it to help establish a backstory for a character, if it has not been described already. Symbolism, when looked at closely and with a larger perspective, can also show an underlying theme for the story. Terry Brooks, in The Sword of Shannara, uses a forest setting as a symbol of fear, mysteriousness, and/or death.
Symbolism is defined as the artistic use of imagery and indirect suggestion to portray mystical or non-literal meaning. An object representing something else is given an entirely different meaning that is much deeper can be considered a symbol. Allegory can be used as a device to aid in character development if used correctly by the author. In two works of literature Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin and in Zora Neale Hurston’s, Sweat, this can be appreciated and seen by the reader.
There are many writers like James Joyce, Patrick Kananach and Thomas Moore who use symbolism to convey and support indirect meaning in their writings. J.D. Salinger and F. Scott Fitzgerald both use symbolism in similar ways. In both "The Catcher In The Rye" and "The Great Gatsby", the authors used symbolism to convey emotions and reality.
Symbolism is a literary technique that is used to clarify the author's intent. Sometimes it is used to great effect, while other times it only seems to muddle the meaning of a passage. In "Young Goodman Brown," Nathaniel Hawthorne uses objects and people as symbols to allegorically reveal his message to the reader.
Symbolism is when the author uses an object or reference to add deeper meaning to a story. There are hundreds of different symbols authors and poets use and even more ways for them to use each symbol. If you think about it anything really can be a symbol if the author wants it to be. There are some basic things to know about symbolism such as that the night often represents death and the morning usually represents the start of life, another big one to remember is that usually a storm is meaning that there is a conflict. There can be things as Broad as the sky or things as small as a cell used as a symbol. They enhance the theme, ideas, or characters in a story to make it interesting or help prove a point or