Interpreting Symbolism in Novels - IB English A1

IB Subjects - IB English A1

I was wondering how you can find a good and useful way of interpreting novels and interpreting the symbolism! I mean, I've read through York notes but I have come to the firm conclusion that they are making it up as they go along! For example, you could get a passage where a couple are having a romantic conversation and drinking tea in the garden, and suddenly the tea symbolises the struggles that workers hundreds of years ago had to endure in the tea plantations and the hardships that they went through, and thus the tea symbolises injustice and moral corruption which makes the reader feel a sense of resentment towards the couple. I mean come on. I was admiring the guy's improvisation to impress the girl, not the tea. So, was wondering what the TRUE method and key is to obtain the wisdom to interpret texts?
- Alexander

Answer

Firstly, I'd say that symbolism comes in lots of different shapes and sizes, and it's difficult to offer an infallible rule for finding it in any text. However, I think that the central question to keep in mind when looking for symbolism in a novel is, 'what ideas does the author convey/explore throughout?' If they don't jump out at you straight away, think about things your teachers discussed with you in class. So, for example, if you're reading a book that's concerned with slavery and injustice, and offers these perspectives upon everyday objects (here, I guess, the tea's inhumane production) you'd be tempted to see the tea as significant, and symbolic. However, if the book you're talking about is a simple love story, and otherwise uninterested in slavery and repression, then the tea is never going to be anything more than just... tea.

To offer a somewhat hackneyed example, one of the central themes in Shakespeare's Hamlet is verbal deception (or 'seeming', as Hamlet puts it again and again). Throughout the first two acts of the play, Shakespeare presents his reader with images of rotten/damaged/poisoned ears- e.g. Hamlet talks about spoilt ears of corn in his first soliloquy, and Claudius kills his brother by dropping poison into his ear. All these different, ruined ears, then, can be seen as symbols of the injury done to the nation, and to individuals, by the 'seeming' (lying) of Claudius and Gertrude (if this seems a little bewildering, bear in mind that the ear is the part of your body where you receive a lie).

Hope this helps? If not, please do get in touch again!

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