Is That a Symbol?

(From chapter 12 of Thomas Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor)

Is that a symbol?

Sure it is.

That's one of the most common questions in class, and that's the answer I generally give. Is that a symbol? Sure, why not. It's the next question where things get hairy: what does it mean, what does it stand for? When someone asks about meaning, I usually come back with something clever, like "Well, what do you think?" Everyone thinks I'm either being a wise guy or ducking responsibility, but neither is the case. Seriously, what do you think it stands for, because that's probably what it does. At least for you.

Here's the problem with symbols: people expect them to mean something. Not just any something, but one something in particular. Exactly. Maximum. You know what? It doesn't work like that. Oh sure, there are some symbols that work straightforwardly: a white flas means, I give up, don't shoot. Or it means, We come in peace. See? Even a fairly clear-cut case we can't pin down with a single meaning, although they're pretty close. So some symbols do have a relatively limited range of meanings but in general a symbol can't be reduced to standing for only one thing.

If they can, it's not symbolism, it's allegory. Here's how allegory works: things stand for other things on a one-for-one basis. Back in 1678, John Bunyan wrote an allegory called The Pilgrim's Progress. In it, the main character, Christian, is trying to journey to the Celestial City, while along the way he encounters such distractions as the Slough of Despond, the Primrose Path, Vanity Fair and the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Other characters have names like Faithful, Evangelist, and the Giant Despair. Their names indicate their qualities and, in the case of Despair, his size as well. Allegories have one mission to accomplish - convey a certain message, in this case, the quest of the devout Christian to reach heaven. If there is ambiguity of a lack of clarity regarding that one-to-one correspondence between the emblem - the figurative construct - and the thing it represents, then the allegory fails because the message is blurred. Such simplicity of purpose has its advantages. George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is popular among many readers precisely because it's relativeley easy to figure out what it all means. Orwell is desperate for us to get the point, not a point. Revolutions inevitably fail, he tells us, because those who come to power are corrupted by it and reject the values and principles they initially embraced.

Symbols, though, generally don't work so neatly. The thing referred to is likely not reducible to a single statement but will more probably involve a range of possible meanings and interpretations.

Reading literature is a highly intellectual activity, but it also involves affect and instinct to a large degree. Much of what we think about literature, we feel first. Having instincts, though, doesn't automatically mean they work at their highest level. Dogs are instinctive swimmers, but not every pup hits the water understanding what to do with that instinct. Reading is like that, too. The more you exercise the symbolic imagination, the better and quicker it works. We tend to give writers all the credit, but reading is also an event of the imagination; our creativity, our inventiveness, encounters that of the writer, and in that meeting we puzzle out what she means, what we understand her to mean, what uses we can put her writing to. Imagination isn't fantasy. That is to say, we can't simply invent meaning without the writer, or if we can, we ought not to hold her to it. Rather, a reader's imagination is the act of one creative intelligence engaging another.

So engage that other creative intelligence. Listen to your instincts. Pay attention to what you feel about the text. It probably means something.