Symbolism, I find, can either enhance a story, make it weaker, or not be needed at all. What do you think makes good symbolism, and not just a pretty cover a la Twilight? Why is it good/bad/neutral symbolism? How can authors integrate the symbolism without it being too obvious?

I agree partly to each of the above. RVL makes a good point, that symbolism needs to be really subtle or almost invisible, or it’s just really bad. With that in mind, Corsair makes a good point that it’s really, really difficult to make symbolism that isn’t terrible and therefore that symbolism as a whole should be avoided; and CB makes another good point that it needs to be integral to the story, and not just literary fapping.

I try to avoid symbolism, myself. Sure, there are certain bits that can come out, but I never consciously insert them.

If a writer is going to put symbolism in their story, I’d rather they made it so subtle that most people miss it. If it’s clumsily done, it’s better it were never done at all.

Everything is a symbol. Actions are symbols, characters are symbols, words are symbols—everything is build on an underlying abstract meaning. We get most out of stories when we ask what they mean to us.

When a character questions his own motives as a result of some other character’s action, it is not a mere plot point: there is also an abstract meaning to it all. These elements are just as much symbols as tone, imagery, rhythm, and anything else.

Which is why what I find what most english teachers do absurd. They never teach their students to dig deeper on their own but instead teach them shallow ways to understand stories.

I do have to agree with the “don’t make too-obvious symbols” bit. Clumsily done symbols don’t add depth to a story. They have to go unnoticed by most people, at least on the first reading, for them to actually be deep and all that. It’s like… To Kill a Mockingbird, why not. If you ask someone to read the book and find a symbol, they’re probably going to pick the mockingbird, because it’s fairly obvious. But there’s also many other symbols, like all the things that show up in the hollow. I never really thought of those as symbols until we discussed the novel in my English class (I had a great teacher that year… if only everyone could have a teacher as good as her! She encouraged us to dig into books on our own, not just follow some pre-defined little outline of What The Book Means.), but then I realized that they all mean something.

Well, to me, a symbol is something that symbolizes something (duh). It has a meaning, a deeper meaning than if you just take it literally.

Where do college professors derive their authority to tell you what is fair game and what isn’t?...
It’s not necissarily that the author goes “aha, symbol time” but that you as a reader derive your own meaning through reflection.

I meant that it seems like college professors (because the teachers have to learn it from somewhere) tell people that this is a symbol and this is a symbol. And they seem to believe that the author went “Aha, symbol time” with everything that they believe to be a symbol. I don’t like that they assume that what they got out of it is absolutely right, and if you don’t agree, you’re wrong.

Sorry, to clarify… when I wrote my earlier post I had the Bible in mind, because I’m sick and tired of reading books with heavy-handed Biblical symbolism in them. Or, say, fashioning your protagonist after some ancient Greek hero that everyone ought to know about, then going ‘hey look I know my Greek mythology and I’m so smart that I put it in my book!’ Things like that. Talking of symbolism any less precise is sort of… well, ambiguous. There’s so much room for interpretation that it’s a bit ridiculous to call it deep.

In English, we had to write a short story and deliberately insert symbolism…urgh. I’m pretty sure an author doesn’t consciously say, like someone else already pointed out, ‘Ooh, I need to put in a symbol.’

I also see what CB says about symbols being how you interpret things.

Good Biblical symbolism (or any kind of symbolism), when applicable to the situation and not thrown in so the author can talk about how clever/moral/knowledgeable/whatever they are, I don’t have a problem with. It’s when it’s obviously thrown in so the writer can be pretentious that I feel like stabbing out my eyeballs.

(I’m looking at YOU, annoyingly good-looking cover of Twilight…)

A story is a symbol godfuckingdammit.

I really hated the symbolism is in the Great Gatsby, just because it was so goddamn obvious which things were symbols and what each symbol meant.

We had to analyze that book to death. I liked Dr. TJ Ecklburg, though. What I didn’t like was analyzing all the names of the characters. Daisy Faye. Faye means “fairy.” Ooooh. Some guy was supposed to be like Daniel Boon or something. I didn’t really like The Great Gatsby. I didn’t connect with any of the characters (maybe that was the point). I understand why people love it, but I need at least one character that I can root for. I didn’t like any of these people. They don’t have to be the “good guy” to be likeable. It did get interesting toward the end. My favorite character was probably Gatsby’s dad. The end was depressing, but good.

I’ve gone off on a tangent, sorry.

What I didn’t like was analyzing all the names of the characters. Daisy Faye. Faye means “fairy.”

But there were thematic names in the cases of Daisy and Myrtle, both named after common plants and both connected to Tom. Also the ‘fairy’ metaphor is used a couple times (Fitzgerald describes Gatsby’s world as ‘suspended on fairy wings’ at one point) so it’s not there just because. The Great Gatsby’s one of those books that’re around to Make A Point, so it is full of symbols… it works, though.

As a piece of art, The Great Gatsby’s quite rich… but it’s not the most enjoyable read, because of all the Deeper Meanings Fitzgerald shoved in.

But there were thematic names in the cases of Daisy and Myrtle, both named after common plants and both connected to Tom.

I understand your point, but I just didn’t like the whole “all their names are meaningful” thing. Maybe they were, but they seemed to expect us to know how all the names related to other things. I didn’t know that Faye meant fairy before.

EDIT: @Art
Yeah, I would imagine that the average person doesn’t look at billboards for hours and analyze their sinificance. I like in the movie (I don’t like the movie, but this part was funny) when Wilson is looking out the window at it and says, “God is watching.” And Myrtle says something like, “It’s an advertisement!”

Probably so.

It would be nice if the symbols were a little more subtle, though.

In Chronicles of Narnia, I think the very obvious-ness of the symbols is what makes it not annoying. It’s not that Lewis was trying to be clever and insert Important Symbolism ^TM into the books. He meant to have them from the very beginning, and he wasn’t trying to hide them or make them mysterious. Because they’re right out in the open, I think people don’t get annoyed by them.

Swenson just put my thoughts into words a dozen times better than mine. :D

Ditto. Bravo swenson! :P