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?
I sympathise with Barbara’s husband and remember thinking at school that my teacher was trying to extract more from the text than was actually there, and getting really tired of analysing every sentence almost when I wanted to get on with reading. That I think was the problem -sometimes I just wanted to know what happened and was not very interested in going any further.
But later I took a course in “Literature” and was fascinated by how much more you can find in a text than on first reading. I read The Waste Land by T S Eliot which is crammed to the brim with symbolism. Without understanding the symbolism and literary allusions much of the poem is meaningless and baffling.
The dictionary definition of “symbol” is that it represents something else such as an idea or a quality by analogy or association for example a rose can represent or symbolise beauty and a serpent may stand for evil. Using symbolism means that a variety of meanings and interpretations are possible and I think they enrich the text. Any object or scene or episode can be symbolic giving depth of meaning and achieving a mysterious suggestiveness.
These days I like to vary my reading and sometimes I’m happy reading books that can be read quickly without thinking too deeply about what is happening, but at other times I want a more complex book, where there are themes working on several different levels that stimulate my imagination. I don’t think the use of symbolism is an older literary device, although my example of The Waste Land is not exactly “modern”.
BooksPlease 
“The Waste Land” was a perfect example – the first time I read it, it made absolutely no sense to me. But after studying it and learning about the symbols and allusions and metaphors, I came to appreciate how wonderfully rich and extraordinary it is. And I agree – sometimes I don’t want to have to think too deeply about what I’m reading. In fact, these days that’s most of the time!
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I agree — I took the weekend just to read for enjoyment, no symbolism allowed!
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I think you need passage of time for symbolism.
Symbolic
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I forgot all about The Waste Land. How could I? It is so full of symbolism. If one read it without the hidden meanings it does not make any sense at all. It is one my favorite works. Of all times.
Symbolism in writing
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One time an author told me he had designed a hallway in a hospital to look like a cross. The chapter had religious undertones. Sometimes the littlest thing can be a symbol or symbolize something the author is trying to tell us. I enjoyed reading your post.
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I’m an author and I’m always surprised when I go back and read my drafts or proofs to see how heavy-handed (it seems to me) my symbolism is – and yet very little of it is conscious. The “search & find” facility on the PC demonstrates how often one uses particular words and images and I note that each book has had a cluster of images that occur again and again in various forms. Future students of my work (!) will no doubt pounce on the broken glass imagery of EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY and the frequent occurrence and importance of hands in A LIFETIME BURNING. Fire was an image that was consciously used in that book, but that was because the story hinged around two particular fires. Even so, I didn’t actually notice that my religion-obsessed teenage heroine was fixated on St Joan! When writing you are too busy telling the story to notice symbolism, but I think your brain produces it as a sort of short-cut to the emotional truth of the story. The image or symbol stands for very much more than the thing itself. It has a resonance for the author. I think in a good book images like this resonate with the reader – consciously or unconsciously – and they get under the skin and work a kind of magic.
I think a book or a poem can work just as well if you are quite unconscious of the symbolism and you can appreciate a painting or a quilt without knowing how such things are made. But there’s a lot to be gained in understanding of how a book actually works its magic (and how the artist-as-conjuror makes it work) by looking at the book’s imagery and symbolism.
Symbolism is just part of the writer’s tool kit. It’s always been there; it will always be there. It’s how the human brain works. Mary Shelley was riddled with guilt about having been the cause of her mother’s death in childbirth. She saw herself as monstrous. So she wrote a book about a man who creates a person who turns out to be a monster and a destroyer… Therapy? Symbolism? Or just a rattling good yarn?…
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Thank you for your comments.
JLS I think The Waste Land is one of the best examples of the use of symbolism because unless you see and understand the symbolism you can’t really appreciate the poem.
Jess, I know what you mean.
Bluestocking, I’m not sure I know what you’re getting at. Reading is a subjective matter and I don’t think the passage of time makes much, if any difference.
Gautami – I agree. When I first read The Waste Land I was completely confused by it and then I grew to love it.
Carol, that’s a good point, because I’m sure I often don’t even recognise the symbolism, but it all works to add meaning to the story.
Linda, what can I say – fantastic? Just as you’re too busy writing the story to notice the symbolism we’re too busy reading to notice it either. But of course it’s there and without it I doubt there would be any good rattling yarns!
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