1. Symbolism

2. Symbolism What Is a Symbol? Where Do We Get Symbols?
What will we learn?
What Is a Symbol?
Where Do We Get Symbols?
Symbols in Literature
Practice Identifying Symbols

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

4. Where Do We Get Symbols? Public symbols
have been inherited, or handed down over time
are widely known
show up in art and literature
Note

5. Where Do We Get Symbols?
What does each of these symbols stand for? Why do you think they have taken on the meanings they have?
justice
love
luck

6. Where Do We Get Symbols? Invented symbols
come about when writers make a character, object, or event stand for some human concern
sometimes become well known and gain the status of public symbol

7. Symbols in Literature Writers use symbols to
suggest layers of meaning that a simple, literal statement could never convey
speak more powerfully to the reader’s emotions and imagination
make their stories rich and memorable

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

9. Symbols in Literature Quick Check
What might the cake symbolize in this passage?
The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on it An épergne or centrepiece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; I saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it
“What do you think that is?” she asked me, again pointing with her stick; “that, where those cobwebs are?” . . .
“It’s a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!”
from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
What is your emotional response to the description of the cake?

10. Practice-Exit Ticket
B. Here is a brief poem that works on two levels: a literal level and a symbolic level. A fen is a swampy place. What does the fen symbolize in this poem? Explain your answer.
I May, I Might, I Must
If you will tell me why the fen
appears impassable, I then
will tell you why I think that I
can get across it if I try.
—Marianne Moore

11. The End