The Following Excerpt Is from Roland Bartel S Metaphors and Symbols: Forays Into Language
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Symbols
The following excerpt is from Roland Bartel’s Metaphors and Symbols: Forays into Language”:
“Learning to recognize symbols is largely a matter of using out intuition and our background in literature. We should remember first of all that anything may be a symbol, that a symbol is any sign that has acquired extra meaning. It may be an object, a gesture, an incident, a person, a plot, a color, a sound, a pattern, or sequence of action – anything that reminds us of something else that in turn seems applicable to the text before us. The word may is crucial. Although we must develop a sensitivity to the possibility that anything unusual may be symbolic, we must refrain from concluding that everything unusual is symbolic. A balance between sensitivity to the possibility of symbols and a common sense approach to the basic meaning of the text is the best guide.”
From another source:
A symbol is something that stands for itself but also something larger than itself. It may be a person, an animal, an inanimate object, or an action. A writer often uses a concrete object to express an abstract idea, a quality, or a belief. A symbol may appeal to a reader’s emotions and can provide a way to express an idea, communicate a message, or clarify meaning. There are conventional symbols and private symbols. A conventional symbol is one that is widely accepted and used by many writers; for example, a nightingale is a symbol for melancholy, a dove for peace, a rose for love and beauty, spring for life, and winter for death. A private symbol is one that an individual writer creates for a particular work of literature. An object is a symbol only if it seems to be representative of something of another kind.
To identify a symbol: “Is some person, place, animal, object, or action emphasized in the work and repeatedly mentioned to the extent that it seems to mean more than that itself?” “If so, what else could it stand for besides itself?”