There used to be an anti-drug public service announcement that went like this. "This is

your brain. This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs." That's a kind of symbolism, and

you understand it instantly. The egg represents, or is a symbol for, your brain. The pan is

a symbol for drugs. The relationship between the two is that the drugs fry your brain.

Pretty obvious, right?

This is a kind of symbolism and you already understand it.

So, a symbol is a thing that represents or stands for something else, usually something

you can see or touch that represents something more abstract, the way a logo represents an

organization, or a heart represents a feeling. That's easy.

But those are visual symbols. Symbols can be written in words too. That's a little more

interesting because it isn't as obvious as an egg in a frying pan. Not only that, you

have to figure out yourself what the symbol represents. It could represent different things,

depending on how it's used.

For example: in a work of literature, what do flowers represent?

Love? Hope? Youth? Death? Just about anything?

The best answer is "Just about anything" because what a symbol represents depends on what's

around it... what's called context.

Let's say you're reading a story in which a woman receives flowers from some guy she

likes. The two are very much in love and she's really happy about getting the flowers. The

author describes the flowers in such detail that they seem more important than just flowers.

The image is made to stand out in some way, and if you're alert, you'll catch that. Later,

the author takes time to describe the flowers again. This time, they're wilted or dead.

An alert reader might see that the flowers are a symbol for something else, maybe the

love between the two people, and that the flowers' later, wilted condition is a sign,

or symbol, that their love has wilted or died as well. Get it? The flowers equal their love.

When the flowers die, it means their love has died.

We know the flowers mean this because the context of the flowers is the love story.

If the context was different, the meaning would be different. Let's say it was a story

about gangsters. The dead flowers in that story could represent the knowledge that the

character's life, like the flowers, will be short. It all depends on the context.

Or here's another example from film instead of literature. In an old Swedish movie called

Wild Strawberries, an old man takes a trip from one city to another. It's a long drive.

But if you look at the context of the story, you will see that the old man is also taking

a trip into his past, into his memories. And just as he encounters surprises and unpleasantness

on the physical trip, he's also discovering unpleasant things about himself and his life.

The road trip is a symbol for a journey of self-discovery.

Furthermore, do you see in that earlier example that it isn't enough to say that the flowers

symbolize the love? That's only half the job. You have to take one more step. You have to

look at what the author wants you to feel about the symbol. Because the flowers are

shown to be wilted, we're being invited to see that what happened to the symbol (the

flowers) has also happened to the thing it represents (their love). So you have to look

at the author's attitude towards that symbol. If the author's attitude is deeply respectful,

then we are supposed to feel respect as well. If the author's attitude when writing about

the wilted flowers is sad, then we're being told that maybe we should feel that way about

the two people's wilted feelings for one another as well.

I sometimes ask students to find symbols, like these, in Harper Lee's novel, To Kill

a Mockingbird. The mockingbird is a symbol. If a character we respect tells us that it's

wrong to shoot a mockingbird, then if the mockingbird is a symbol for something or someone

else, the author is saying it's wrong to harm that person or thing.

If you wanted to get a theme out of that symbol, just figure out what that symbol represents

in the real world, not in the fictional world. What in our world could be represented or

symbolized by the mockingbird? Certain kinds of people, maybe?

And once you get the hang of it, you'll see potential symbols in just about everything.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, you can't throw a stick and not hit a symbol: the mockingbird,

the mad dog, the housefire, Scout's ham costume, Jem's broken arm, Tom's disabled arm, Boo

Radley's isolation, the mud-and-snowman, the geraniums, the roly-poly, and one of my favorites,

the lightbulb at the jailhouse. The trick is seeing the relationships between things

in the book and then finding the same relationships somewhere else -- in other parts of the book,

or in the world we live in.

Furthermore, to my thinking, it doesn't matter whether or not the author put that symbol

there on purpose. If your imagination sees symbolic meaning, and you can support that

meaning with evidence from the book, then it's there. Thinking up a symbol is exactly

that -- thinking. Learning to think, not just know, is the most valuable thing you can learn

in school.

Just remember, 1) find something that stands out in the book, that seems to call attention

to itself, and look at the context around it. Next, 2) does that thing resemble something

else in the book, or in the world in general? One could be a symbol for the other. And 3)

look at the author's attitude towards it. Whatever we're supposed to feel about the

symbol, we're also supposed to feel about the thing the symbol represents.

The value in learning about symbols is that it teaches you to see beyond the surface of

a thing, of a person, of a real-life situation or event, and see the abstract relationships

at work there. If you can find meaning in a book's symbols, then you can find meaning

in your own life and your own world.

Now go find some symbols, and happy hunting!