Symbol: Study Guide (English Literature 6.5)

From object to symbol

A key is an object. It opens a door. In a story, however, a key may be handed over with ceremony, kept in a drawer for years and then lost at a decisive moment, and by then it is no longer simply a key. The course states the idea this way: when a material object comes to represent, or stand for, an idea or concept, it becomes a symbol. The object is said to be symbolic or representative of that meaning.

The move is from the literal (a key opens a lock) to the figurative (the key stands for access, trust, a secret, or a past that can be reopened). The object does not stop being a key. A good symbol lives on both levels at once.

Three points about how symbols work:

• A symbol can represent different things depending on the reader’s experience and the context of its use. That is why evidence matters. You are not decoding a secret list; you are building an interpretation.
• Some symbols are so common and recurrent that readers already have associations with them before they begin a text, such as a dove for peace or winter for death or decline.
• Other symbols are more contextualised and come to represent something only through their use in a particular text. A locked gate in one novel may mean something that it means nowhere else.

A character can become symbolic too, when they come to represent or stand for an idea or concept. (The exam does not require you to identify or label archetypes.) A setting can become symbolic when it is associated with emotions, ideologies or beliefs. Topic 7.5 returns to settings and to motifs.

How to recognise a symbol

Writers signal symbolic weight in several ways. Look for these.

Signal	What it looks like
Repetition	The object appears again and again, often at important moments
Prominence	Unusual detail, a whole sentence or paragraph devoted to something small
Character reaction	Characters avoid it, guard it, fear it or cannot let go of it
Placement	It appears at a turning point, an ending or an opening
Linked language	It is described with words that belong to a different realm, such as grief, power or time
Change	Its condition changes as the story’s situation changes

A four-step method

1. Notice. What is the object, and what signals weight (repetition, attention, reaction)?
2. Associate. What ideas does the text connect it with? What do characters feel about it?
3. State. What idea does it represent here? Put it in a short phrase.
4. Function. What does this do in the work? Does it make an internal feeling visible, mark a stage of change, connect scenes, deepen a conflict or invite a particular interpretation?

If the meaning changes in the text, add a fifth step: trace the shift and explain what the change shows.

Public-domain examples to learn from

Macbeth (Shakespeare, about 1606). After the murder of Duncan, Macbeth asks, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” Blood is a literal stain, but here it is repeated and charged, and it comes to stand for guilt that cannot be removed. Later the motif returns in Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking, where she tries to wash a stain that nobody else can see.

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847). After Rochester proposes, lightning splits a great chestnut tree in the orchard. The tree, a living thing at the place of their meeting, is damaged in the night, and the reader is invited to see the split as a sign that the union is threatened.

The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850). The letter that Hester is made to wear begins as a public mark of shame. In the course of the novel, other characters read it differently, and the meaning shifts. The symbol is powerful because its meaning is contested.

Great Expectations (Charles Dickens, 1861). Miss Havisham, who has stopped the clocks at the moment she was jilted, can be read as embodying a refusal to let time move, a character who has come to represent an idea as well as being a person.

Worked example 1: recognising and explaining a symbol

Original passage written by Marlbridge for practice. It imitates the register of a nineteenth-century novel and is not taken from any published work.

The orchard gate had been padlocked since the autumn Papa died, and Eleanor had taken to walking the long way round to the dairy so that she need not pass it. Spring after spring the apple blossom climbed the wall and spilled over the top, and the gardener, who had the only key, pretended not to see her looking. It was Midsummer before she asked him for it. “You’ll find it stiff, miss,” said he, and put it in her palm as though it were something that might wake.

Task. Explain how the gate and the key function as symbols.

Notice. The gate is padlocked, which is a literal fact. But the text gives it a date, “since the autumn Papa died”, links it to a behaviour, walking “the long way round”, and keeps it in view over many springs. The repetition (“Spring after spring”), the gardener’s pretence, and the narrator’s attention make it more than a gate.

Associate. The gate is tied to the father’s death and to avoidance. The blossom that “climbed the wall and spilled over the top” is life pressing against an enclosure.

State. The locked gate stands for Eleanor’s sealed-off grief and for memory she has refused to face.

Trace the shift. The meaning moves when she asks for the key. The gardener puts it into her palm “as though it were something that might wake”. The simile treats the key as alive and perhaps dangerous, and the line marks her first step from avoidance to confrontation.

Function. The symbol turns a private emotion, which a narrator could simply have told us, into something that can be seen, walked round and finally approached. It marks stages in Eleanor’s change over time and prepares the reader for the scene when the gate is opened.

A model sentence. “By keeping the padlocked orchard gate in view across several springs, and by making Eleanor detour to avoid it, the narrator turns a physical barrier into a figure for her unmourned grief, so that the moment she takes the key reads as the first step in facing her loss.”

Worked example 2: a symbol whose meaning shifts

Original passage written by Marlbridge for practice. Later in the same novel:

The November storm took the gate off its hinge. Eleanor found it lying face-down in the grass among the windfalls, and was surprised to feel not loss but relief.

Task. How does this passage change the meaning of the symbol?

Before. The gate had been a barrier that held back the orchard and, by extension, her memories.

After. The gate lies “face-down” and no longer closes anything. The storm, a common symbol of upheaval, has done what Eleanor had not yet done. The narrator tells us that she feels “relief”, not “loss”, which turns the fall of the gate into the end of an enforced silence and leaves the way open.

What the shift shows. The gate’s meaning moves from enclosure to release. The story also uses a symbol people already recognise (the storm) together with a symbol made by the text (the gate), and the two meet at the moment of change.

Weak and strong claims side by side.

Weak	Why it is weak	Strong
“The gate is a symbol.”	Names a technique without meaning or function	“The gate represents Eleanor’s sealed-off grief.”
“The gate symbolizes death.”	Does not fit the evidence of avoidance and blossom	“The gate, tied to the autumn her father died, represents grief she has locked away.”
“The gate represents grief, and this shows grief.”	Circular; no function	“Having the storm remove the gate lets the narrator mark Eleanor’s release as something that comes unbidden, so that her relief seems both surprising and earned.”

A model sentence. “When the storm leaves the gate face-down in the windfalls, the narrator converts a barrier into an opening, and Eleanor’s relief shows that the grief the gate once enclosed is no longer something she can or wants to keep out.”

Common misconceptions

• “Every object is a symbol.” Most objects in a story are just objects. A symbol earns the name through repetition, emphasis, reaction or placement.
• “A symbol has one correct meaning.” A symbol can represent different things depending on the reader and the context. Support your reading with evidence and be open to a second reading when the text supports it.
• “Saying ‘symbolizes’ is the analysis.” The analysis is the evidence, the idea and the function.
• “A symbol is just a decoration.” It does work: it makes an abstract idea visible, marks change and links scenes.
• “I need to know what the object means in all literature.” Common symbols give you a starting point. Contextual symbols must be read from the text.

Where this leads

Symbols belong to literary arguments about meaning, so Topic 6.6 turns to writing a thesis and commentary. Test yourself with the Topic 6.5 practice questions, review with the revision notes and track your progress with the checklist.