Unit 6 · Topic 6.6

6.6 Symbols and symbolic characters

A symbol is an object, place, action or character that stands for an idea beyond itself. Some symbols carry meanings most readers already share, while others only gain meaning from how one text uses them. Characters can become symbolic too, and a symbol's meaning can shift as the story goes on.

Key terms

symbol
symbolic character
conventional symbol
contextual symbol
allegory

Two kinds of symbols

A conventional symbol has a meaning most readers in a culture already know. A dove suggests peace, winter suggests death or hardship, and a crossroads suggests a choice. A contextual symbol gets its meaning from the work itself: the writer keeps linking an object to an idea until the object carries that idea.

Contextual symbols matter most on the exam, because you have to build their meaning from the text. Look for objects that come back at important moments, get described with unusual care, or get attention from characters.

A symbol that changes: the scarlet letter

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850), Hester Prynne must wear a scarlet A as punishment for adultery. At first the community means it as a mark of shame. Over the years, Hester's quiet work nursing the sick changes how people read it. Hawthorne writes that many people "refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able."

The object stays the same, but its meaning shifts as the community changes. That tells you something larger: meaning isn't fixed in the symbol. It comes from the people interpreting it, and the novel is partly about who gets to decide what Hester is.

Symbolic characters

A character can also function as a symbol. Hester's daughter, Pearl, is the living result of the affair, and Hawthorne directly calls her "the scarlet letter endowed with life." She's still a real child, but she also embodies her mother's sin and her mother's passion. A symbolic character doesn't stop being a character; they carry an extra layer.

When a whole story works as a system of symbols, where each character and place stands for an idea, it's called an allegory. A work can use symbols without being an allegory, and most novels on the exam aren't allegories.

The green light in The Great Gatsby

At the end of Chapter I, Nick sees Gatsby reaching toward "a single green light, minute and far away." Later we learn it marks the end of Daisy's dock. When Gatsby finally gets Daisy back, Nick guesses that the light's "colossal significance" has "vanished forever. … Now it was again a green light on a dock." In the novel's last lines, "Gatsby believed in the green light," and the light grows into a symbol of a dream that is always ahead of us and never reached.

The pattern is the lesson: a symbol introduced, linked to a desire, emptied out when the desire is met, then widened at the end to cover everyone.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Tracing a symbol across a whole novel
Write a body paragraph for a literary argument essay explaining how the green light in The Great Gatsby develops Fitzgerald's view of longing.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Find the symbol's key appearances: Chapter I (Gatsby reaching toward it), Chapter V (it becomes ordinary once Daisy is near), and the final page (it stands for everyone's dreams).
2. Step 2: Track the change: from Gatsby's private hope, to an emptied symbol, to a symbol of all human longing.
3. Step 3: Make a claim about what the change shows.
4. Step 4: Use short quotations and explain each one; don't retell the plot.
Answer: Model paragraph: Fitzgerald uses the green light to suggest that longing depends on distance. When Nick first sees it, it is "minute and far away," and Gatsby stretches his arms toward it, so desire is pictured as reaching. Once Gatsby has Daisy beside him, Nick senses that the light's "colossal significance" vanishes and it is "again a green light on a dock": getting close to the dream drains the magic out of it. On the last page, "Gatsby believed in the green light," and the "us" at the end of that sentence widens the symbol beyond one man. By moving from Gatsby's private hope to everyone's, Fitzgerald suggests that the dream lasts only as long as it stays out of reach. (Annotation: three moments from across the novel show the work as a whole, and each quotation gets its own explanation.)

Common mistakes

Turning every object into a symbol. A symbol earns the label by recurring, getting emphasis or being linked to an idea by the text.
Giving a symbol one fixed meaning when the text changes it over time.
Spending your essay naming an archetype (like "the hero's journey"). The exam won't ask you to identify archetypes; explain the specific meaning in this work instead.

On the exam

Multiple-choice questions often ask what an object most likely represents in context. Pick the answer the passage supports, not a meaning you'd assign the object in general.
In essays, track a symbol across at least two or three moments. Showing how its meaning develops is stronger than decoding it once.

Connected topics

Videos

What is SYMBOLISM? (And How to Analyze Symbols in Literature!)
Garden of EnglishWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
"What is Symbolism?": A Literary Guide for English Teachers and Students
OSU School of Writing, Literature and FilmWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Types of Characters in Literature: Part III (Stock Character, Confidant, Foil, Symbolic Character)
ELA ExplainedWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Symbols in Literature
WarnerJordanEducationWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
"What is an Allegory?": A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers
OSU School of Writing, Literature and FilmWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

5 questions on 6.6 Symbols and symbolic characters. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.

The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway—a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

“And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

He was the only man of us who still “followed the sea.” The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them—the ship; and so is their country—the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899; in book form 1902), the opening. Two excerpts: three paragraphs describing the sunset and the river’s history are left out between paragraphs 3 and 4.

Question 1 of 5

The “brooding gloom” over the city, which returns in paragraphs 2, 3 and 4, works most like a symbol because it

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over:

“Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That’s all right!”

He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with maddening persistence.

Mr. Pontellier, unable to read his newspaper with any degree of comfort, arose with an expression and an exclamation of disgust.

He walked down the gallery and across the narrow “bridges” which connected the Lebrun cottages one with the other. He had been seated before the door of the main house. The parrot and the mocking-bird were the property of Madame Lebrun, and they had the right to make all the noise they wished. Mr. Pontellier had the privilege of quitting their society when they ceased to be entertaining.

He stopped before the door of his own cottage, which was the fourth one from the main building and next to the last. Seating himself in a wicker rocker which was there, he once more applied himself to the task of reading the newspaper. The day was Sunday; the paper was a day old. The Sunday papers had not yet reached Grand Isle. He was already acquainted with the market reports, and he glanced restlessly over the editorials and bits of news which he had not had time to read before quitting New Orleans the day before.

Mr. Pontellier wore eye-glasses. He was a man of forty, of medium height and rather slender build; he stooped a little. His hair was brown and straight, parted on one side. His beard was neatly and closely trimmed.

Mr. Pontellier finally lit a cigar and began to smoke, letting the paper drag idly from his hand. He fixed his gaze upon a white sunshade that was advancing at snail’s pace from the beach. He could see it plainly between the gaunt trunks of the water-oaks and across the stretch of yellow camomile. The gulf looked far away, melting hazily into the blue of the horizon. The sunshade continued to approach slowly. Beneath its pink-lined shelter were his wife, Mrs. Pontellier, and young Robert Lebrun. When they reached the cottage, the two seated themselves with some appearance of fatigue upon the upper step of the porch, facing each other, each leaning against a supporting post.

“What folly! to bathe at such an hour in such heat!” exclaimed Mr. Pontellier. He himself had taken a plunge at daylight. That was why the morning seemed long to him.

“You are burnt beyond recognition,” he added, looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage. She held up her hands, strong, shapely hands, and surveyed them critically, drawing up her fawn sleeves above the wrists. Looking at them reminded her of her rings, which she had given to her husband before leaving for the beach. She silently reached out to him, and he, understanding, took the rings from his vest pocket and dropped them into her open palm. She slipped them upon her fingers; then clasping her knees, she looked across at Robert and began to laugh. The rings sparkled upon her fingers. He sent back an answering smile.

“What is it?” asked Pontellier, looking lazily and amused from one to the other. It was some utter nonsense; some adventure out there in the water, and they both tried to relate it at once. It did not seem half so amusing when told. They realized this, and so did Mr. Pontellier. He yawned and stretched himself. Then he got up, saying he had half a mind to go over to Klein’s hotel and play a game of billiards.

“Come go along, Lebrun,” he proposed to Robert. But Robert admitted quite frankly that he preferred to stay where he was and talk to Mrs. Pontellier.

“Well, send him about his business when he bores you, Edna,” instructed her husband as he prepared to leave.

“Here, take the umbrella,” she exclaimed, holding it out to him. He accepted the sunshade, and lifting it over his head descended the steps and walked away.

Kate Chopin, The Awakening, Chapter I (1899). Two excerpts: one paragraph describing other guests at the resort is left out between paragraphs 7 and 8.

Question 2 of 5

The caged parrot that keeps repeating “Allez vous-en!” (paragraphs 1–2) works most like a symbol because

Question 3 of 5

The moment in paragraph 10 when Mr. Pontellier drops Edna’s rings “into her open palm” and she slips them back on is significant chiefly because

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule, it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson’s lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King’s Chapel. Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.

This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it,—or whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson, as she entered the prison-door,—we shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.

When the young woman—the mother of this child—stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her towns-people and neighbors. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was lady-like, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognized as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more lady-like, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true, that, to a sensitive observer, there was something exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer,—so that both men and women, who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time,—was that SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850). The last two paragraphs of Chapter I (paragraphs 1–2) and two paragraphs from Chapter II (paragraphs 3–4).

Question 4 of 5

The narrator offers a flower from the rose-bush that may “symbolize some sweet moral blossom” (paragraph 2). The rose-bush stands out as a symbol chiefly because

Question 5 of 5

The embroidered letter A, made “with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy” (paragraph 3), complicates its intended meaning chiefly because

0 of 5 answered