Literature: Tone & Symbolism

Literature: Tone & Symbolism

Question 1: When is an element in a text symbolic?

Answer 1: In determining whether a particular object, action, or character is a symbol, you need to
judge the importance the author gives to it. If the element is prominent and also maintains a
constancy of meaning, you may justify interpreting it as a symbol. Additionally, by referencing the
writer's cultural and social heritage, you can often determine what objects, actions, or
characterizations are generally recognized and interpreted as common cultural symbols. The image of
the dragon, for example, has cultural meaning in those societies with Celtic history and traditions.

Prose Text

Writers of the fictive text will often introduce both cultural and contextual symbols. Cultural symbols
are known to readers and writers who share the same historical and cultural backgrounds. When using
cultural symbols, the writer assumes that readers already know what the symbols represent. The
image of an eagle, for example, has connotative meaning for writers and readers of an American text.
Contextual symbols, however, are authorial symbols. In other words, they only have inferential
characteristics within a particular work. Contextual symbols derive their meaning within fiction from
the context and circumstances of the story. Although prominent in one work, they are not likely to
(but could) carry over into another literary piece.

Poetry Text

Because poetry is compact, its descriptions and portrayals of experience are brief. Symbolism and
allusion are therefore part of poetry's primary characteristics. The use of symbols in the poetic text is
a means of moving outward or of extending information and ideas. Poets will use a variety of symbols,
including both cultural and authorial, in a variety of ways. For example, some individual words will be
symbolic in themselves, or an action may take on symbolic meaning; the scene or setting may
represent a deeper layer of text, and characters and situations may be given symbolic value. Just as
symbols have meaning in the poetic text, so too do allusions and myth. Allusions take the form of
unacknowledged brief quotations from other works and references to historical events or recorded part
of human experience. Mythic symbols are also commonly used by poets because myths are ingrained
in cultural histories and human cognition.

Drama Text

In drama, as in fiction and poetry, the meaning of a symbol extends beyond its surface meaning.
Dramatic symbols, which can be characters, settings, objects, actions, situations, or statements, can
be both cultural and contextual. When a play offers consistent and sustained symbols that refer to
general human experiences, that play can be construed as an allegory, or at least as being allegorical.

Question 2: How do I write an analysis of tone or symbolism?

Answer 2: The most common analytical approach is to use a process of explication. Explication goes
beyond the assimilation required for paraphrasing. Although more complete than a précis, there is no

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Literature: Tone & Symbolism

need to explain everything within an explication. In the case of explicating a work's tone or symbolic
features, for example, your written document only entertains those particular elements. A complete,
or total, explication would theoretically require you to explain the meanings and implications of each
word and every line—a technique that would obviously be exhausting. A more desirable method is the
general explication, which devotes attention to the meaning of individual parts in relationship to the
entire work.

Prose Text

Explication can be used for understanding the establishment of tone and symbolism in the fictive text.
Ask yourself some of the following questions:

• What does the title contribute to the overall theme or idea of the story?
• What unusual and repetitive words does the author use, and why?
• What contrasts in situation or words are used by the writer?
• What voices have particular knowledge, and what characters do not?
• What references to historical or cultural events occur within the text?

Poetry Text

In poetry, your general explication demonstrates your ability to follow the essential details of the
poem, understand the issues and the meaning the poem reveals, explain some of the relationships
between technique and meaning, and note and discuss important or unique aspects of the verse.
Questions you might want to consider include the following:

• What does the title contribute to the reader's understanding?
• Who is speaking, and why?
• What difficult, unusual, or repetitive terms does the poet use, and why?
• What details comprise the formulation of an entire idea?
• What mythic or historical symbols are used, and why did the poet include them?

Drama Text

When explicating drama, try to deal with how the tone is established by the writer and what impact it
has on the play's meaning. Seek those devices that the playwright employs to control your attitudes
toward individual characters, situations, and outcomes. Look for clues in stage directions, diction,
imagery, rhetorical devices, tempo, and context. Further, try to determine what characters, objects,
settings, situations, actions, words, phrases, and costumes appear to be symbolic. What do they
symbolize, and how do you know they are symbolic? Are they universal or authorial? Is the symbolism
extensive and consistent enough to form an allegorical system? If so, what are the two levels of
meaning addressed by the allegory? To what extent do symbols or allegory shape the play's meaning
and your responses to it?

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