Searching for Symbolism

Part of understanding an the inner workings of an art form is identify it in two ways: what you see, and what you don't see. What you see, everyone else can see. It is elementary, and evident to anyone with eyes, no matter how reflective or introspective their minds are. It is available to everyone. The more exclusive inner working is what isn't on the surface. Suppose you're looking at a painting. The colors and shadings on the canvas could make the painting seem sorrowful, not to mention the mournful looking man painted into the picture. Already, we see something that guides us to select a more melancholy emotion. But what else is there? What are we not seeing? Perhaps there are more details in the picture that can tell us something more about this painting and why it appears to be so sad. Maybe there is a framed picture of a woman that has been painted into this composition. Perhaps this could imply that the man is mourning his wife. Perhaps she has passed, perhaps she has left, but who is to say which is right? The artist? What if he doesn't know? The fact here is, we have already found two staunchly different and yet similar examples of an ageless literary device: symbolism.

The dark shades and colors can symbolize a mood of sadness, right off the top. The framed picture of the woman could symbolize loss, which would seem like the most likely reason the man in the painting is mourning. The truth is, symbolism can exist anywhere in anything. Particularly in literature, we can find symbols based on the words we read on the paper, and what we never find in the paper, but discover for ourselves. 

One area that is guaranteed to have symbolism in almost any piece of literature is in the environment of the story. The setting, the location, the geography in which the story thrives all help the story to develop into something deeper. One classic phrase, and opener of many novels, has been used timelessly to symbolize something the reader is about to experience: "it was a dark and stormy night". Immediately, we get an understanding of the mood, and theme, and the tone of the piece. The stormy night is not just an observation of weather conditions, but rather symbolizes a dark fate that may befall the plot and the characters. 

Sometimes, they are not this straightforward. In some cases, a thing that has more than one symbol could be completely different from the other thing it symbolizes. For example, we see this in Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". Huck and his friend Jim escape down a river on a raft. The same river is responsible for killing Huck's abusive father, as well as being Huck's road to freedom. Twain never explicitly states that the river symbolizes both freedom and fate, but it appears that it actually does. 

When we search for symbolism, we make discoveries that exist within the paper, and yet don't. We allow our minds to make these connections so that the story takes on a deeper meaning. With symbolism, the smallest most straightforward thing can breed new avenues of possibilities. And the possibilities are endless.