Symbol and Imagery in Fiction: Study Guide (English Literature 7.5)

Image, motif and symbolic setting

Topic 6.5 introduced symbols as objects that stand for ideas. Short fiction adds three related tools, and they often work together.

• An image is a sensory detail: what we see, hear, smell, taste or feel. Imagery builds the world of the story and its mood.
• A motif is a unified pattern of recurring objects or images used to emphasise a significant idea in large parts of, or throughout, a text.
• A setting can become symbolic when it is, or comes to be, associated with abstractions such as emotions, ideologies and beliefs.

The course also notes that over time some settings have developed associations such that they almost universally symbolise particular concepts. A desert may suggest emptiness or testing; a garden may suggest innocence or retreat; a storm may suggest upheaval. These associations give you a starting point, but each text uses them in its own way.

What images do

Function	What the image does	Example of a comment
Create mood	Sets an atmosphere through sensory detail	“The sound of dripping water builds a mood of neglect”
Make the abstract concrete	Gives an idea a physical form	“The cold light makes loneliness visible”
Characterise	Shows how a character perceives the world	“She notices only the stains on the cloth”
Link and repeat	Ties scenes together by echo	“The recurring smell of smoke connects each warning”

Always ask: what does this sensory detail suggest, and why this one and not another?

From image to motif

A single image is a detail. A motif appears when images recur and converge on an idea. A method:

1. Collect the recurring objects or images (light, water, locks, birds, cold).
2. Group them by what they have in common.
3. State the idea they emphasise.
4. Track change: do they intensify, shift or reverse?
5. Explain function: what does the pattern contribute across the work?

Public-domain examples to learn from

The Fall of the House of Usher (Edgar Allan Poe, 1839). The story begins with an atmosphere of oppression: “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country”. The setting becomes symbolic: “the House of Usher” is both a building and the family line, and the narrator notes “a barely perceptible fissure” that runs down the front of the wall to the tarn. The crack suggests decay in the family, and when the house finally collapses into the tarn, the building and the family end together.

Young Goodman Brown (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1835). The village of Salem and the forest are set against each other as places of faith and doubt. Brown’s wife Faith wears pink ribbons on her cap, and a pink ribbon later falls from the sky in the forest, so that the ribbon becomes a recurring image tied to her innocence. When he sees it, Brown cries, “My Faith is gone!” The name and the ribbon work together as a symbol.

Worked example 1: a motif built from images

Original passage written by Marlbridge for practice.

The January light came into the schoolroom thin and white, like milk held up to a window. Mr Alder held his hands out to it as to a fire that was not there. At noon the children ate their bread in silence, and the light lay on the floor between them like a sheet of ice that nobody dared to step on. By three it had thinned further, and when he dismissed them it was with the feeling of letting go of a last warm coin.

Task. Identify the images and the motif, and explain their function.

Images. The passage is built from sensory details of light and temperature: light “thin and white”, “like milk”; hands held “as to a fire that was not there”; light “like a sheet of ice”; and “a last warm coin”.

The motif. All the images concern light that is cold or too thin to warm, set against suggestions of warmth that is absent or fading: the missing fire, the “last warm coin”. The pattern converges on an idea: a lack of warmth, in the room and in the people in it.

Tracking change. The images intensify through the day. In the morning the light is “thin”, at noon it is “ice” that “nobody dared to step on”, and by three it is thinner. The last image reverses the direction of feeling: dismissing the children is “letting go of a last warm coin”, which suggests that for Mr Alder the children’s presence was the only warmth left.

Function. The motif makes an emotional state visible. The children’s silence and the ice-like light suggest a classroom where warmth is not expressed, and the final image reveals Mr Alder’s own deprivation. The imagery therefore characterises the setting and the man, and prepares the reader for a story about loneliness.

A model sentence. “By returning to thin, cold light through the morning, the noon and the dismissal, and ending on ‘a last warm coin’, the narrator builds a motif of absent warmth that turns a schoolroom into a figure for Mr Alder’s isolation.”

Worked example 2: a setting that becomes symbolic

Original passage written by Marlbridge for practice.

Beyond the last fence the marsh began. Nobody in Saltby spoke of it, though everybody could tell you its depth in any season, and mothers, when they wished a child to be good, did not say the marsh would take him; they said only that the marsh was patient. On the evening of the fair, Joss walked out past the fence with his good boots in his hand, and the reeds closed behind him with a sound like a long exhaled breath.

Task. Explain how the marsh may be read as a symbolic setting.

Signals of symbolic weight. The marsh is unspoken (“Nobody in Saltby spoke of it”) yet known (“everybody could tell you its depth”). That gap shows that it holds something the community knows and avoids. Mothers use it as a lesson: the marsh “was patient”, a personification that makes it a waiting force and not a place.

Common and contextual associations. Marshes have long suggested decay, danger and the edge between solid ground and dissolution, and these are the common associations. The story adds its own: the fence marks a boundary, the village’s silence suggests a shared taboo, and “patient” suggests an inevitable reckoning.

Joss’s behaviour. He walks out “with his good boots in his hand”, that is, barefoot, abandoning his respectable footwear. The detail suggests a deliberate leaving of the village’s standards. The “sound like a long exhaled breath” in the reeds as they close behind him is both an image (sound) and a simile, and it suggests release or finality.

Meaning. The marsh can be read as standing for what the community will not name: fear, death, or the consequences of leaving its rules. Joss’s act is a movement beyond the village’s boundary of what may be said.

Function. By turning the setting into a symbol, the narrator turns a decision into a crossing of a boundary the reader can see, and prepares for what happens to Joss as a meaningful outcome.

A model sentence. “By making the marsh both unspoken and universally known, and by having Joss cross the fence barefoot as the reeds close like an exhaled breath, the narrator turns a landscape into a boundary around what the village cannot say.”

Weak and strong claims side by side

Weak	Why it is weak	Strong
“The author uses imagery.”	Names a technique and nothing else	“The recurring images of thin, cold light make the schoolroom’s lack of warmth visible.”
“The marsh is a symbol of death.”	A fixed meaning with no evidence from the passage	“By making the marsh unspoken yet universally known, the narrator turns it into a boundary around what the village cannot say.”
“The house symbolises the family.”	True of one famous story, but unsupported here	“Because the crack in the wall runs down towards the tarn, the building’s decay is tied to the family’s end.”

Notice that each strong version includes evidence (the repeated images, the village’s silence, the crack in the wall), an idea (lack of warmth, the unsaid, decay) and a function (making something visible, marking a boundary, linking building to family).

Common misconceptions

• “Imagery means only visual description.” Imagery appeals to all senses, and sound and smell often carry the strongest effects.
• “Any repeated word is a motif.” A motif is a pattern that converges on an idea and does work across the text.
• “A setting is symbolic because it is a garden or a storm.” Traditional associations are a start. The text must support the reading.
• “Imagery only decorates.” It creates mood, makes abstract ideas concrete and characterises.
• “One reading is the only reading.” A symbolic setting can support more than one interpretation if the evidence supports each.

Where this leads

Figurative comparison is the next tool, so Topic 7.6 turns to simile and personification in fiction. Test yourself with the Topic 7.5 practice questions, review with the revision notes and track your progress with the checklist.