Careful reading and common sense are the most important requirements. Only after you feel you fully understand the literal level of the story’s meaning and yet sense a pattern of suggestive details, a dimension beyond the literal, will you wish to explore symbolic interpretation. Sometimes symbolic significance is readily accessible through speech,gesture, and action.
Symbolism in fiction depends for its effectiveness on the reader’s making the right associations, understanding the ways in which symbols may expand and deepen meaning. Symbols make good literary sense only when considered in the overall context provided by a piece of fiction. As an interpreter of symbols in fiction, you are concerned with putting things together, with seeing the story in more than one dimension.
Exercise 1.
Below you will find a number of traditional symbols. With which concepts are they generally associated?
The snake the dog the swan the crown
The heart the apple grapes the fox
Spring winter autumn the Sun
The Moon the diamond the red colour the white colour
The black colour the green colour
Read the short story and answer the questions that follow it.