12.2. Symbols, Metaphors, and Allusions

We're talking about symbols, metaphors, and allusions in our class, and I realized that it's tough to tell these apart, partly because they all have the same kind of job -- they are the trapdoors to the theme level.

To review, a story, when it's literature, works on two levels. The first level is the "reading" level -- these characters, with these backgrounds, personalities, and desires have problems with internal and external aspects, which they try and fail to fully solve until they don't (or maybe don't in a really final way). That's what a reading teacher teaches in the elementary school.

There is another level, though, that runs parallel to the literal, "reading" level. This is the metaphoric, or "literature" level. In this level, the story maker is trying to communicate to the reader about universal ideas. The most basic one is theme -- in fact, the theme taught by literary stories is sometimes spelled out inside the plot. However, there is all kinds of other interesting stuff to find.

The literature level is far more difficult to find, because artists usually won't address it directly. They tell a story and bury these messages in it. I'm not sure why; I think that it's because people generally don't like to talk about deep stuff in public, so artists have to hide their vitamins in the chocolate bar. That's me guessing, though.

Anyway, metaphor, symbol, and allusion are three ways that artists try to build trapdoors so that you can find the deeper level hidden there.

1. Metaphor is when an a speaker says that one thing is like a categorically different thing. The two things have some creative connection that makes you understand them better, or remember the point more easily. The last line of The Great Gatsby is something like, "And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." That image of a person trying to row a boat against the current of the water is supposed to be like a person trying to move forward in their life, but they can't, since they are dragged backwards by what happened to them in their past. It's a neat trick; it lets you imagine a really abstract idea. Maybe we can call that one definition of art, it's when somebody tries to take ideas and turn them into objects that you can sense.

2. Symbols work just like metaphors, except the symbol has to be something in the story. In Gatsby, there's no rowboat at the end of the story, so it's a metaphor. However, if a thing (or character) has a deeper, abstract meaning and it IS in the story, too, it's a symbol. These are actually harder to spot than metaphors, because everybody understands how they work in the "reading" level, so it's especially easy to miss their other job. In the story, "The Treasure of Lemon Brown," the titular "treasure" helps drive the plot, because the thugs mistake it for something that they want to steal. However, as a symbol of how worldly accomplishment is most worthwhile because of the pride in you that your loved ones feel, it is key to understanding the theme. It's a helpful trapdoor to the universal "literature" level. If a writer describes anything carefully, a character or (especially) an object, it's a symbol. If a person or thing serves as the title of the story, it's a symbol of something.

3. An allusion is another way to build trapdoors to the deeper level. When James Joyce wanted to build a novel out of a single day's events in the life of one man, he needed to make sure that the reader understood that he was actually trying to wrestle with things he thought were important. So, he built into his novel, Ulysses, a bunch of references to Homer's Odyssey. These allusions let the reader know that Joyce wanted his readers to understand his book as one dealing with those most important things in life, or even life itself, as epics used to attempt. An allusion is a reference to another, more famous story -- usually the author is trying to point out in an indirect way that the two stories share related themes.

4. One last way that writers try to build hinted puzzles for the reader to solve in through puns in names. The names that a writer chooses for places or characters often have meaning that help. In Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes picks the main characters names to let you know how they work -- the dad is Matt (his wife walks all over him), the mom is Rose (she symbolizes blood and anger), and sister, Norma, is the normal child that Rose always wished for.