The Book Lady’s Blog

I’m a day late on this one, but I didn’t want to miss the topic. After all, English geeks do love their symbolism.

Question suggested by Barbara H:

My husband is not an avid reader, and he used to get very frustrated in college when teachers would insist discussing symbolism in a literary work when there didn’t seem to him to be any. He felt that writers often just wrote the story for the story’s sake and other people read symbolism into it.

It does seem like modern fiction just “tells the story” without much symbolism. Is symbolism an older literary device, like excessive description, that is not used much any more? Do you think there was as much symbolism as English teachers seemed to think? What are some examples of symbolism from your reading?

This is kind of a toughie. There are some cases where I think the author definitely intended symbolism (e.g., Piggy’s glasses as a symbol of intelligence/civilization in Lord of the Flies), and then there are cases where some readers see symbolism and others don’t. Does this mean that the ones who see the symbolism are smarter or better readers and that the ones who don’t see it are somehow lesser? I don’t think so.

So much of what I love about literature is that it is, by nature, something each of us experiences differently. Even as individuals, we can read the same book at two different points in our lives and see different meaning in it with each reading. We bring our experiences and emotions, our worldviews and our worries, and our hopes and disappointments with us to each book we read. We are different people, and it only makes sense that we are going to read things differently.

I took this great philosophy of aesthetics course my senior year in college, and we spent countless hours looking at art and discussing first what the artist’s stated message was (if the artist ever did state what he or she was trying to convey) and then what the piece said to us. Some people said they only wanted to see what the artist intended. Others didn’t care at all what the artist intended and just wanted to see what they saw, to experience the piece for themselves. And, of course, there were some in the middle.

I think it’s similar with literature. When we’re lucky enough to have access to authors’ discussions of their work, we can find out what they intended to convey, and we can better understand where they are coming from. But if we see things in the work that they didn’t put there on purpose, or even that they claim are not there? Well, that’s okay, too.  Unless you’re reading a book for an English class and have to give the expected answer, who really cares what symbolism you see? It’s all about how a book affects you, what it makes you think about, what meaning it carries for you. If I were an author, I think I’d find it endlessly fascinating to hear about symbolism readers found in my books that I didn’t even know was there.

I don’t spend much time actively looking for symbols in the books I read for pleasure, but I did so much literary analysis in college that I automatically bring that way of thinking with me, and I think that comes through in my reviews. When I come across characters named Bits and Ash in a book that is essentially about a family falling apart, you can bet dollars to donuts that I’m going to think about what their names mean and why the author chose them. I figure those things are there for a reason, and understanding them adds depth to my reading experience.

But that’s not always the case. If not for a recent Weekly Geeks activity, I’d never have known that Eugenia means “aristocrat,” and I can’t say that my reading of The Help suffered for not knowing that.

Do books always carry the symbolism English teachers think they carry? Well, I guess that depends. It depends on who you are, on why you’re reading, and on what you’re hoping to see. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but sometimes it’s something more. And it all depends on your perspective.