Symbol and allegory

A symbol, according to Webster’s Dictionary, is “something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance…a visible sign of something invisible”. Symbols, in this sense, are with us all the time, for there are few words or objects that do not evoke, at least in certain contexts, a wide range of associated meanings and feelings. For example, the word home (as opposed to house conjures up feelings of warmth and security and personal associations of family, friends, and neighborhood, while the American flag suggests country and patriotism. Human beings by virtue of their capacity for language are symbol-making creatures.

Most of our daily symbol-making and symbol-reading is unconscious and accidental, the inescapable product of our experience as human-beings. In literature, however, symbols – in the form of words, images, objects, settings, events and characters – are often used deliberately to suggest and reinforce meaning, to provide enrichment by enlarging and clarifying the experience of the work, and to help to organize and unify the whole. William York Tindall likens a literary symbol to “a metaphor one half of which remains unstated and indefinite”. The analogy is a good one. Although symbols exist first as something literal and concrete within the work itself, they also have the capacity to call to mind a range of invisible and abstract associations, both intellectual and emotional, that transcend the literal and concrete and extend their meaning. A literary symbol brings together what is material and concrete within the work (the visible half of Tinsdall’s metaphor) with its series of associations (that “which remains unstated and indefinite”); by fusing them, however briefly, in the reader's imagination, new layers and dimensions of meaning, suggestiveness, and significance are added.

The identification and understanding of literary symbols require a great deal from the reader. They demand awareness and intelligence: an ability to detect when the emphasis an author places on certain elements within the work can be legitimately said to carry those elements to larger, symbolic levels, and when the author means to imply nothing beyond what is literally stated. They also make demands on the reader’s maturity and sophistication, for only when we are sufficiently experienced with the world will the literal and concrete strike an appropriate symbolic chord. If, that is to say, we have not had the occasion to think much or think deeply about life and experience it is not likely that we will be able to detect, much less understand, the larger hidden meanings to which symbols point. As Tindall observes, “What the reader gets from a symbol depends not only upon what the author has put into it but upon the reader’s sensivity and his consequent apprehension of what is there”.

However, there are dangers as well. Although the author’s use of symbol may be unconscious, ours is an age in which the conscious and deliberate use of symbolism defines much of our literary art, as the criticism of the past forty years amply bears witness. There is, consequently, a tendency among students of literature, especially beginning students, to forget that all art contains a mixture of both the literal and the symbolic meanings where none are intended or pushes the interpretation of legitimate symbols beyond what is reasonable and proper. Both temptations must be avoided.

It is perfectly true, of course, that the meaning of any symbol is, by definition, indefinite and open-ended, and that a given symbol will evoke a slightly different response in different readers, no matter how discriminating. Yet there is an acceptable range of possible readings for any symbol beyond which we must not stray. We are always limited in our interpretation of symbols by the total context of elements, and we are not free to impose – from the outside – our own personal and idiosyncratic meanings simply because they appeal to us. Finally, in working with symbols we must careful to avoid the danger of becoming so preoccupied with the larger significance of meaning that we forget the literal importance of the concrete thing being symbolized. Moby Dick, for all he may be said to represent to Ahab, Ishmael, Starbuck, Flask, Stubb, Herman Melvill, and finally to the reader, is still a whale, a living, breathing mammal of the deep that is capable of inflicting crushing damage on those who pursue him too closely.

Types of Symbols

Symbols are often classified as being traditional, original, or private, depending on the source of the associations that provide their meanings.

1. TRADITIONAL SYMBOLS. ‘Traditional symbols’ are those whose associations are the common property of a society or a culture and are so widely recognized and accepted that they can be said almost universal. The symbolic associations that generally accompany the forest and the sea, the moon and the sun, night and day, the colors black, white and red, and the seasons of the year are examples of traditional symbols. They are so much a part of our culture that we take their significance pretty much for granted. A special kind of traditional symbols is the “archetype”, a term that derives from anthropologist James G. Frazer’s famous study of myth and ritual The Golden Bough (1890-1915) and then depth psychology of Carl Jung. (Jung holds that certain symbols are so deeply rooted in the repeated and shares experiences of our common ancestors – he refers to them as the “collective unconsciousness” of the human race – as to evoke an immediate and strong, if unconscious, response in any reader). Conrad’s use of blackness in “Heart of Darkness”, with its obvious overtone of mystery, evil, and Satanism, is in example of an archetypal symbol. Stories which focus on the initiation of the young – for example, Sherwood Anderson’s I Want to Know Why, James Joyce’s Araby, Flannery O’Connor’s Artificial Nigger, and Katherine Anne Porter’s The Grave – all carry with them archetypal overtones; Frazer discovered that such rites of passage exist everywhere in the cultural patterns of the past and continue to exert a powerful influence on the patterns of our own behavior.

2. ORIGINAL SYMBOLS. ‘Original symbols’ are those whose associations are neither immediate nor traditional; instead, they derive their meaning, largely if not exclusively, from the context of the work in which they are used. Melville’s white whale is an original symbol, for white whales are often associated in the popular imagination with brute strength and cunning, Moby Dick assumes his larger, metaphysical significance (for Ahab he is the pasteboard mask behind which lurks the pent-up malignity of the universe) only within the contextual limits of Melville’s novel. Outside that novel, a whale is just a whale.

3. PRIVATE SYMBOLS. ‘Private symbols’ restrict the source of their meaning even more that original symbols. Just as all of us have certain objects in our lives that call to mind a variety of private associations (the way a family heirloom does), certain authors employ symbols that are the products of their own peculiar and idiosyncratic systems of philosophy or belief, as is the case with a number of the symbols found in the poetry of William Blake and William Butler Yeats. Private symbols, by virtue of their source, are esoteric and largely unintelligible, except to those whom the author or the author’s critics and interpreters have succeeded in educating. Fortunately, most of the symbols that the average reader encounters are either traditional or original. The presence of traditional symbols, it should be noted, does not mean that we are free to ignore the framing context of the work and to impose from the outside one pattern or another as we see fit. Traditional symbols, for all their accompanying associations, must always be established by the context of the work and find their significance inside the work, not beyond it.

Uses of Symbols

Symbols operating at the level of individual words and combinations of words called images are crucial to the art of poetry, and for their discussions of poetry that follows. In this section, we will briefly consider how writers of fiction employ symbols in conjunction with setting, plot, and character.

SETTING AND SYMBOL. In a number of the examples used in the preceding section of setting – Hardy’s Egdon Heath, Crane’s snow-surrounded blue hotel, Roderick Usher’s house, and the city streets through which Robin Molineux roams in search of his kinsman – we noted how the details of setting are used functionally to extend, clarify, and reinforce the author’s employ the seasons of the year and the time of day because of the traditional associations these have for the reader. These identifications are not arbitrary ones, for in each of the works cited the author deliberately calls attention to the setting, not once but on several occasions, in a way that suggest that it is integrally related to his larger purposes. In the case of Hardy and Crane, it is to call attention to the thematic implications of the work; in the case of Poe and Howthorne, it is to help reveal the personalities of their characters. Setting in fiction that goes beyond mere backdrop is often used in such symbolic ways. Symbolic settings are particularly useful to authors when they frame and encompasses the events of plot and thus provide the work as a whole with an overarching pattern of unity.

PLOT AND SYMBOL. Single events of plot, large and small, or plots in their entirety often function symbolically. “Moby-Dick”’s literally filled with examples of the former, and in each of the cases cited here, Melville deliberately calls the reader’s attention to the event by setting it off in a brief, appropriately titled chapter that forces the reader to consider its larger significance. In Chapter XXX (“The Pipe”), Ahab hurls his pipe into the sea (“This thing is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs, not among iron-grey locks like mine. I’ll smoke no more”), an act that suggests Ahab’s lack of inner tranquility and his growing social isolation from the members of his crew. In confirmation of his interpretation, the alert reader will recall two earlier scenes in the Spouter-Inn at Bedford, where Ishmael and his new-found friend, the giant harpooner Queequeg, share a pipe together in celebration of the ancient ritual of friendship and solidarity. Later in the novel (Chapter CXVIII, “The Quadrant”), as the “Pequod” approaches its appointed rendezvous with the great white whale, Ahab seizes the ship’s quadrant and smashes it (“no longer will I guide my earthly way be thee”) a symbolic gesture signaling the monomaniacal captain’s arrogant assertion of his own power and omnipotence; from the moment onward, the destiny of ship and crew is to be squarely in his own hands.

In both examples, Melville encourages his reader to seek larger significance and meaning in what might otherwise overlooked as small and apparently insignificant actions. And in both examples, our ability to interpret these actions correctly – to see their symbolic importance – increases our understanding of Captain Ahab. In most instances, however, the author will not be so obliging. Although it is certainly true that even the most commonplace or event – even to the level of a gesture, if it is a spontaneous and unconscious one – can carry symbolic meaning, it is often difficult, at least upon first reading, to tell for certain whether the symbolism is involved. Its symbolic character may not become clear until we have finished the work and look backward to see how the individual parts of the plot relate to the whole. In Hawthorne’s My Kinsman, Major Molineux, for example, it may not be clear until the end of the story that each of the separate incidents that punctuate Robin’s journey in search of his kinsman form a chain of symbolic events that constitutes a plot falls into a symbolic pattern, as in My Kinsman, Major Molineux, the events are often archetypal. Such a plot, that is, conforms to basic patterns or human behavior so deeply rooted in our experience that they recur ritualistically, time and time again, in the events of myth, folklore, and narrative literature.

In fiction, perhaps, the most frequently encountered archetypal pattern is the journey or “quest”, in which young men and women undergo a series of trials and ordeals that finally confirms their coming of age and new-found maturity.

CHARACTER AND SYMBOL. Symbolism is frequently employed as a way of deepening our understanding of character. Some characters are given symbolic names to suggest underlying moral, intellectual, or emotional qualities. The name “Robin Molineux”, for example, suggests springtime, youth, and the innocence, while the name “Roger Chillingsworth” (Hester Prynne’s husband in The Scarlet Letter) suggests cold intellectuality and lack of human warmth, in keeping with his demonic character. The objects assigned to characters function in the same way: the heavy oak cudgel that Robin carries with him into the city is a symbol of his youthful aggressiveness; Miranda’s attraction to the carved wedding ring which her brother has discovered in the grave in Katherine Anne Porter’s story symbolizes her vague intimation of the role in life she is destined to play; the gun which Dave covets in Richard Wright’s The Man Who Was Almost a Man is a symbol of the masculine independence which is not yet his; Ahab’s ivory leg, the badge of his first encounter with Moby Dick, serves to objectify the physic wound that gnaws at him from within; and the house in which Emily Griegson has lived so long in William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily functions as an analog to Emily herself, “lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay” alone and apart.

But while the personalities of major characters are often revealed and clarified through the use of symbols rooted in the language that describes them, their very complexity as human beings usually prevents their being defined by a single symbol. This is not true of minor characters, especially those who are flat and one-dimensional and are “constructed round a single idea or quality.” Fiction is filled with such individuals. The girl in James Joyce’s Araby, significantly known only as “Mangan’s sister,” in whose service and religious-like adoration the narrator visits the bazaar, symbolizes the mystery, enchantment, and “otherness” that typifies and objectifies a young boy’s first love. In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness the Director of Companies, the Lawyer, and the Accountant who sit on the deck of the “Nellie” in the “brooding gloom” of evening listening to Marlow recount the his journey in search of Kurtz symbolize the type of men who are incapable of appreciating or understanding the moral complexity of experience.

Self-satisfied, complacent men, who have become successful by mastering the practical affairs of the world, they are “too dull even to know [that they, too,] are being assaulted by the powers of darkness.” And, finally, there is Old Man Warner in Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, who as a participant in the lottery on seventy-six previous occasions and as its chief defender (“There’s always been a lottery”) symbolizes blind subservience to an established ritual that has long since ceased to have a rational purpose. Symbolism thus enhances fictions by holding “the parts of literary work together in the service of the whole” in such a way as to help readers organize and enlarge their experience of the work. This is not to say that a work of fiction containing symbolism is inherently better than or superior to one that does not. Nor is it to say that the use of symbolism in and of itself can make a given work successful. Is it to say that symbolism, when employed as an integral and organic part of the language and structure of a work of fiction, can stimulate and release the imagination – which is, after all, one of the chief goals of any form of art.

Allegory

Allegory is a technique for expanding the meaning of a literary work by having the characters and sometimes the setting and the events, represent certain abstract ideas, qualities, or concepts – usually moral, religious, or political in nature. Unlike symbolism, the abstractions of allegory are fixed and definite and tend to take the form of simple and specific ideas that, once identified, can be readily understood. Because they remain constant, they also are easily remembered. In their purest form, works of allegory operate consistently and simultaneously at two separate but parallel levels of meaning: one located inside the work, at the level of the particular ideas or qualities to which these internal elements point. Such works function best when these two levels reinforce and complement each other: we read the work as narrative, but are also aware of the ideas that lie beyond the concrete representations. Allegories tend to break down when author’s focus and emphasis shifts in the direction of the abstract, when we have reason to suspect that the characters, for example, exist only for the sake of the ideas they represent. At such times our interest in the narrative inevitability falls away and we tend to read the work for the message or thesis it promotes.

In the most famous sustained prose allegory in the English language, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (published in two parts, in 1678 and 1684), the didactic impulse always latent within allegory is very clear. Pilgrim’s Progress is a moral and religious allegory of the Christian soul in search of salvation. It tells the story of an individual, appropriately named “Christian”, who warned by the Evangelist to leave his home in the City of Destruction, sets off with his pack (containing his load of worldly sins) to seek the Celestial City (heaven). His road, however, is a long and difficult one, and at every turn Christian meet individuals and obstacles whose names and personalities (or characteristics) embody the ideas, virtues, and vices for which they stand: Mr. Worldly Wiseman (who dwells in the town of Carnal-Policy), Mistrust, Timorous, Faithful (who tells about his own encounters with Pliable, Discontent, Shame, and Talkative), Giant Despair (who holds Christian prisoner for a time in Doubting Castle), the Slough of Despond, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Hill Difficulty, and so on.

Although such works of pure allegory as Bunyans’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queene are relatively rare, many works make extended use of allegory (Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, and George Orwell’s Animal Farm), and many more make occasional use of allegory, not infrequently combined with symbolism. As a functional more of presentation, however, allegory is unquestionably out of favor among modern and contemporary authors and critics, for reasons that have to do with the nature of allegory itself. First of all, the didacticism of allegory and its tendency toward a simplified, if not simplistic, view of life is suspect in a world where there is little common agreement about truth and the validity of certain once universally respected ideas and ideas. Second, the way allegory presents characters is simply not in keeping with the modern conception of fictional characterization. In allegory the characters, and the ideas and ideas those characters embody, are presented as given. The modern author, on the other hand, prefers to build characters and to develop and reveal their personalities gradually, in stages, throughout the course of the work. And, finally, twentieth-century critics tend to be intolerant of any literary work whose meaning is not totally contained within the structure of the work.

Several of the stories included in this anthology either contain clear instances of the use of allegory or lend themselves to allegorical readings. Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist, for example, has been interpreted as an allegory treating the plight of the artist in the modern world. An allegorical reading has also been suggested for Hawthorne’s My Kinsman, Major Molineux. Read as a historical and political allegory of America’s coming of age and maturation as a young and independent nation, Robin can be said to represent colonial America and his kinsman, the British colonial authority that must be displaced and overthrown. Both Robin and colonial America share a number of common characteristics: both have rural, agrarian origins; both are young and strong, yet insecure and self-conscious because untested and inexperienced in the ways of the world; both are pious and proud (even arrogant) and given to aggressive behavior; and both have a reputation, deserved or not, for native “shrewdness”. Just as Robin learns that he can “rise in the world without the help of [his]….kinsman, Major Molineux,” so colonial America realizes that it can achieve its destiny as a mature and independent nation without the paternalistic control of Great Britain. In each of the preceding examples, an allegorical interpretation does seem to “work”, in the sense of that it allows us to organize the elements of the story around a central illuminating idea. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to press such reading too far. To read these works “exclusively” as allegories is to oversimplify the internal dynamics of each story and to distort the author’s vision.

Although most modern writers prefer symbolism to allegory as a technique for enlarging the meaning of their works, allegory continues to make an occasional appearance in modern and contemporary fiction, particularly among such writers as C. S. Lewis, George Orwell, and William Golding, whose works are underscored by a strong philosophical, political, or religious vision. The names of many of the fictional creations of Flannery O’Connor, who confessed that she felt “more of a kinship with Hawthorne than with any other American writer”, openly hint that they exemplify the kind of abstractions we associate with allegory (Joy Hopewell, Mrs. Freeman, Manley Pointer, Grandmother Godhigh, Mrs, Chestny, Mr. Head, Mrs. Cope, Mr. Cheatam, Mr. Greenleaf, Mrs.May). When authors like Flannery O’Connor do employ allegorical names, they usually take care not to allow the names to carry the full burden of characterization. O’Connor’s characters are far more complex individuals than the single qualities of their names suggest.

Analyzing Symbol and Allegory

1. What symbols or patterns of symbolism (or allegory) are present in the work? Are the symbols traditional, original or private?

2. What aspects of the work (e.g., theme, setting, plot, characterization) does the symbolism (allegory) serve to explain, clarify, or reinforce?

3. Does the author’s use of symbolism (allegory) seem contrived or forced in any way, or does it arise naturally out of the interplay of the story’s major elements?