L.A.Mitchell-articles

L.A. Mitchell

Romance...Out of Time

Facet I :: Symbolism

Symbols are one of the most effective ways writers can create a lasting impact in the reader’s mind. A touch-point to theme and character, symbols provide a tangible, sensory opportunity to connect author to reader on a basic, emotional level. Unearthing these touch-points and understanding how they can best enhance a story is an essential part of deepening prose.

What is symbolism?

By definition, a symbol is: something that represents something else by association, resemblance or convention. In writing, a symbol can be an object, a character, an event, an action—almost anything with significance beyond its original form. Any one thing placed in a story that resonates deeper than surface level can help the writer create a more cohesive and satisfying experience for the reader.

Symbolism can sweep across a story through broad, large-scale strokes or whisper with a frequency barely audible outside the boundaries of one scene. Symbols can be the thread woven through key turning points or the glass magnifying a connection between a protagonist and his value system.

Types of Symbolism

Some objects or actions in a story are central and obvious, their interpretation essential if the reader is to gain any significant meaning from the story. In Ann Brashares’ SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS, the jeans passed around between four friends who spend the summer apart become not only a symbol of friendship—the vehicle by which each character absorbs the strengths of the others—but the skeletal frame on which the story hangs. In this way, the symbol carries the burden of the work.

Less obvious and more peripheral symbols can lay dormant throughout the course of the story until the moment of highest impact, where a singular object or action can reinforce and add meaning to the entire piece. The film CITIZEN KANE is filled with symbolic examples, but none as effective as the mystery surrounding the word “Rosebud,” the protagonist’s dying word in the opening scene. The meaning behind the word becomes the story goal of the reporters sent to investigate the rich Charles Kane. At the film’s conclusion, the revelation of the symbol’s meaning is more significant because it carries the entire weight of the story’s theme behind it.

Symbols can be universal, a type of reoccurring thematic shorthand found in all literature, past and present. A place where rivers signify life and storms translate into chaos. These symbols perpetuate and thrive because of the common denominators most readers share, an easily accessible road to the emotional touch-points of the human experience. Mark Twain no doubt chose the Mississippi River as the backdrop for HUCKLEBERRY FINN because of his intimate knowledge throughout his own childhood and years as a river pilot, but through the narrow-escape adventures of Huck and Jim, the river’s powerful life-force becomes more than just a setting. Not only does the river symbolize freedom and independence, but it borrows on the reader’s literary understanding of water’s capacity for cleansing and rebirth handed down since biblical times.

Situational symbols arise organically from the context of the narrative. In this type, the author can achieve a meaningful impact without the symbol being seen as a contrived stunt to force meaning. Literature is filled with situational symbols, from Hester Prynne’s Letter “A” in THE SCARLET LETTER to the heartbeat in Edgar Allan Poe’s THE TALE-TELL HEART, a symbol of the narrator’s guilty conscience.

Using Symbolism to Deepen Prose

Symbolism is not something the writer can sit down and purposefully inject into a piece of work. Only at the end of a rough draft, when the writer can look back and reflect on the images lining the path of their story, can meaningful symbols emerge and theme begins to take shape.

However, there are a few things the writer can do to ensure that pockets of potential significance bubble to the surface during the initial drafts.

1. Emphasis. Slow the description of important details to clue the reader in on the object’s significance. Dwight Swain, in TECHNIQUES OF THE SELLING WRITER, suggests adopting a camera’s eye in the first draft. Zero in on one observable item and expand it until it fills the screen. Show your character’s reaction. His interpretation and the conclusions he draws will immediately place an emphasis on the symbol in the reader’s mind.

2. Repetition. Embrace potential symbols in key scenes and find ways to repeat and weave them throughout the remaining key scenes. In THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST, Ann Tyler’s use of rain at plot point two echoes the opening scene in which an escalating storm provides the perfect backdrop to the growing tension between two central characters. In this way, symbols act as a powerful, reflective link between major story arcs and draw from the reservoir of emotional connection the reader feels throughout the story.

3. Position. A symbol placed in a title or chapter heading will remain on the reader’s radar throughout the story. First scenes and last scenes, acting as bookends, can also have more impact through the use of symbols.

4. Names. In A PERFECT CRIME, Peter Abrahams named one of his lead characters, a man who discovers his wife in the throes of adultery, Roger. This character, screwed over in the literal and figurative sense, makes for wonderful symbolic characterization the reader can sink into when they’re grasping for a foothold in a new story. Even “Jolly Roger,” the sarcastic nickname by which another character refers to him on page five, begins to carve out this man’s nature.

The goal of the writer should be to emphasize natural pockets of detail in a stealth-like way, so that most readers locked into the story never realize they’ve stumbled upon a symbol. A symbol’s emotional impact becomes greater when the reader makes the connection, actively engaged in the collective meaning of the story.

Symbols embellish and deepen, but too much can hurt the story. Authors Robie Macauley and George Lanning, in their guide to the craft and art of writing, Technique in Fiction, caution the writer on the pitfalls of symbolism:

“Symbols are not bright devices to be hung on the tree of the story. Nor can they be fabricated in an attempt to give the fiction an air of deep significance. They are serious and useful only when they are born from the narrative itself, when they come from the same well of imagination as the story.”

When used effectively, symbols carry the reader beyond the confines of the page to a place where thoughts lead to interpretation and stories leave a lasting impression.

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