1. What ideas do these images represent?

2. What do we call these types of images?
Radiation Hazard
Handicapped
Deer Crossing
Recycle
Merge

3. Symbolism
This means something!

4. Getting started!
What objects or things “symbolize” America?

5. Getting started! What about symbolism in literature?
What the clip to learn more!

6. Definition
The use of specific objects or images to stand for abstract ideas
Objects
Animals
People
Actions
An abstract idea is something that you can not touch.
Freedom
Beauty
passion
Love

7. Definition
A symbol must be tangible (something you can touch) and visible
A symbol must be something you can hold in your hand or draw a picture of; the idea it symbolizes must be something you cannot hold in your hand or draw a picture of.
Other things, like names, we tend to call “symbolic” (and that’s OK), but technically they are “metaphorical,” not symbolic
Freedom

8. Types
Universal: symbols that embody universally recognizable meanings wherever used
Light for knowledge
A skull for death
Constructed: symbols that are given symbolic meaning by the way an author uses them in a literary work
The white whale becomes a symbol of evil in Moby Dick
Onions become symbols of goodness and healing in Holes

9. Extension: The great debate
Do writers purposely mean for objects, events, etc. to symbolize something?
The answer is…. Yes!!
And No.

10. Does it really mean...?
You’d have to come up with a really good argument to persuade me that a journey a character makes isn’t a symbol for that character “growing up” or “finding himself”
But… that doesn’t mean that a journey means JUST that
And it doesn’t mean it HAS to mean that

11. So it means…?
There are many events, objects, etc. that are commonly used to symbolize something, like an actual journey for a spiritual one
So we can look to this “canon” of universal symbols for ideas
But we also bring our own ideas and background to a text

12. Symbolism: the bottom line
When you ask yourself, “Does this red sock mean something?” the answer is…
“Yes, it means X.”
Or, “It means Y.”
Or, “It means X and Y.”
Or, ”No, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a sock.”
Know that it could mean something and go to the canon of universal symbols. And look for constructed symbols. But don’t get stuck there.
Reading is a relationship between you, the book, and the author. The red sock might mean the same thing for you, me, and thousands of other people, but then again, it might not.
And it just might be a sock.

13. Practicing the Canon
Time to play a little “Symbolism Golf!”