Behind blue curtains

Years of meticulously analysing every possible angle of a text in English classes have given many of us a difficult relationship with symbolism. “But surely,” we’ve cried, “the author couldn’t possibly have planned to convey all of these deep and poetic things with such mundane details! Our teachers are reading far more into it than the writer intended; maybe the curtains were just blue!”

I myself wholeheartedly agreed with this sentiment, and there is a valid point in there—your readers will absolutely read things into your stories that you didn’t do on purpose (for better or worse). But after quite a few years of experience and further study, my perspective on over-reading symbolism into texts began to change.

Because symbolism doesn’t just function on the level of intention—it goes deeper than that.

What I mean is that a very large part of the way symbolism works is through shared cultural understandings and instinctual connections. If we intend for our readers to understand a piece of subtext in a particular way, we’re going to deliberately use these understandings to draw the desired connection through some sort of symbol. But we’re influenced by cultural symbols just as much as our readers, so when we create our world we’re liable to instinctively make sense of it using those same symbols, even when we don’t (initially, at least) realise that we are.

Has that got you thinking? Let’s dive a little deeper into different types of symbolism and the ways it can be used—perhaps you’ll recognise some ways you’ve used symbolism in your own work!

Symbolic colours

Alright, this is the easy one, so let’s get into it first. I expect most people are aware, at least on a basic level, of colours having symbolic associations. For example, cowboys in white hats are likely to be good guys, and those in black hats the baddies; another example is the way emotions are often colour-coded (red = angry, blue = sad, green = envious).

All of this is, of course, highly dependent of the context in which the colours are being used. The colour white, for example, could indicate innocence and purity if associated with a child or a bride, but it might also represent sparseness and a lack of humanity if used in a medical or mechanical setting. Furthermore, there are a number of cultures in which white is commonly used as a mourning colour, in which case it is more easily associated with death.

Symbolic representation

The most “classic” use of symbols, if there is such a thing, is using an object (or an image) to stand in for something else, usually a more abstract concept. Brands are particularly notable for this: consider the compass logo of Safari, the camera icon of Instagram, or the Rolex crown. All three use their logos to draw on other concepts that they want to associate themselves with: exploration, photography, high societal status. It is also a major part of heraldry, where one defines one’s household and family with increasingly complex combinations of colours, patterns, and images.

A couple of other ways to use symbols representationally are through metonymy (referring to a concept with a related word, e.g. “crown” to describe a monarch) and synecdoche (using a part to refer to a whole, e.g. asking for someone’s “hand” in marriage).

Symbolic allusions

Sometimes, a symbol is just a shorthand for referencing something else, such as another text or story, a person, or a setting. If I tell you that a character has strong Weird Al vibes, I’m using Weird Al as a symbol to communicate something about the personality and/or appearance of the other character. Similarly, if I were to bestow upon my character the grace and dignity of the mighty kererū, I have not only communicated the traits of the bird itself, but also that the environment of Aotearoa (where kererū are from) is relevant or meaningful.

A real gold mine of allusory symbols is religious iconography—since today is Easter Sunday, let’s look at a couple of related symbols. First up, the cross. This is a very common Christian symbol year-round, but it becomes more prominent around Eastertime, especially in bakeries. The cross represents Jesus’ death by crucifixion, which is a central part of Christian theology as a whole and the Easter story in particular. Another common symbol for this time of year is rabbits, both chocolate and egg-bearing. Bunnies are in this case emblematic of spring, the season where we typically start seeing a lot more of them about. Because Easter is normally celebrated near the spring equinox (at least in the northern hemisphere), it ties in really closely with celebrations of the arrival of warm weather and bouncy new life.

Symbolic charcters

As well as being described using symbols, characters can also be symbols in themselves. They might be representational of a particular cause or movement, acting as a sort of “face” or figurehead—consider how historical figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr, Ghandi, and Robespierre are portrayed.

Alternatively, they might hold a symbolic place in the story as an archetype. Archetypal characters are not always symbolic, but can be used to quickly build a character by drawing on recognisable characteristics. In genres which rely strongly on stock characters, such as Victorian English melodramas, this is very straightforward; the villain is always recognisable by his twirly moustache. You do need to be careful with symbols and archetypes, though, as many symbolic features drawn from physical characteristics are based on racial stereotypes, and we don’t want to get into that.

We’ve looked at a handful of ways that writers use symbolism to enhance their work; in many cases this is done deliberately, but it’s also often a result of subconcious cultural connections. Sometimes we might add a symbol to our writing purely because we like the description or the image it conjures, without necessarily planning to be symbolic about it, and sometimes we might not realise that we’ve used a symbol at all until someone points it out. It doesn’t make the symbolism any less present or potent, just more instinctual.