Wordsmithing symbols, like you do - Rowena House

I got a handle on symbolism this week. Not in any grand sense, but a working definition that can serve the WIP.

As a literal person, symbolism isn’t a subject I’m inclined to engage with but needs must, so I turned to Penguin’s Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, having been confused by the way John Truby uses the term in his writing guide, The Anatomy of Story.

The Penguin dictionary defines a symbol as ‘an object, animate or inanimate, which represents or stands for something else.’ It can be a thing – scales represent justice, doves peace etc – or an action or gesture. A raised fist symbolizes victory, defiance, or power (in my book, at least).

So far so good.

Literary symbols, apparently, ‘combine an image with a concept’ and may be ‘public or private, universal or local’. A journey to the underworld is (according to Penguin) universal as a symbol, though what it symbolises – a redemptive odyssey, for example, or a dark night of the soul – varies.

Fair enough. Onwards...

The dictionary helpfully points out words themselves are also symbols which, at one level, makes this post ‘symbolic’. *eye roll emoji* Let’s leave semiotics aside, shall we?

Blood in Macbeth symbolises guilt and violence.

In Hamlet, disease and weeds represent corruption and decay.

But then...

‘In King Lear, clothes symbolize appearance and authority.’

What?

Okay, elite clothing is designed to express authority, crowns and ermine and whatnot, but how do they symbolise appearance? They are appearance. Unless the dictionary means ‘the appearance of authority’ which is a bit redundant, in my not-so-humble journalistic opinion.

It’s like Truby saying Moses’s tablets of stone represent the ten commandments. Surely, they are the things the commandments are written on, mineral slabs with chiselled words. They might represent concepts about a supreme being’s unwavering will and rule over humanity, but how do they represent themselves – unless we’re back to semiotics again?

[I do hope no theologian reads this and feels compelled to ‘educate’ me. It’s a creative writing blog, with zero spiritual significance.]

Anyway. I’ve decided to treat symbols as another type of subtext. They are things or actions which carry meaning to the reader through connotation.

Some of these connotations are self-evident enough to be considered universal – AKA, they don’t need explaining within the particular context of a story.

For example, the seventeenth century assize trial on which my WIP is based took place in a castle. I’d bet two groats and a tankard of your finest, barkeep, that the justice system chose that location deliberately. 

The historic power and control exercised by the military from their fortress was coopted by the civilian authorities to symbolise their power and control over the local population. Thus the castle is symbolic as well as a girt great pile of stones.

My protagonist is a pamphleteer, so his pen symbolises his trade. If he broke that pen in two, I’m guessing most readers would get the point at once: he’s had enough.

I’m thinking of using an extended symbol as a closing scene. The particular becoming universal through a piece of technology. I think it could work, and at the moment it certainly seems preferable to convoluted explanations or contrived dialogue.

So that’s a tick. I’ve got my ‘symbol web’ as Truby calls it and can explain what I mean by it should anyone ask.

Yay.

For those who care about these things, I’m sticking it out on Twitter at @HouseRowena, defending the ‘town square’ for the wokerati.

Meanwhile, whittering about the witchy work-in-progress at Rowena House Author on Meta’s slightly less toxic FB space. Have a good one.