Literary Technique Symbol in Human Life and Art

Symbols Illuminate Themes in Literature, Poetry, and the Human Mind

Nov 15, 2009

Our world is filled with symbols that people often fail to notice, and take for granted. Symbols help enlighten works of art and human psychology and motivation.

A symbol is one person, place, thing, or idea that stands for another. The symbol is an important and much-used literary technique by artists, writers, and the general population.

Psychologists, including Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, studied the importance of symbols to humans, and applied their studies as a way to help people understand themselves.

Symbols Applied to Human Psychology

Symbols can be part of the collective consciousness, or unconsciousness, as noted by Carl Jung in his book Man and His Symbols. One of the symbols which Jung found throughout the world is the mandela.

Sigmund Freud applied the study of symbols to dreams. While many of Freud's interpretations of dreams were rooted in primeval drives, even Freud admitted that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Examples of the Literary Technique: Symbols

Symbols can also be used within groups, as in social circles, clubs, or gangs, which have their own symbols. Finally, symbols can be personal, with meaning just for one person.

Collective Symbols

Group Symbols

Personal Symbols

If someone’s love interest drives a certain type of car, then just seeing a similar car will remind the person of the love interest.

At work, if one person receives a new computer, and another person doesn’t, it’s a symbol that one person is more valued than the other.

Sample Literary Analysis Using the Literary Technique: Symbol

Here is a sample analysis of a symbol from The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll. The book details Jim's descent from a promising basketball player into a life of drugs, prostitution, and theft. At the end of the book, Jim is looking out the window towards the Cloisters, a New York City musuem. He writes, "I can see the Cloisters with its million in medieval art ...I just want to be pure" (p. 210).

In this case, the Cloisters are symbolic for Jim. The museum might represent his ambivilent attitude towards church and spirituality. While the Cloisters hold the religious artwork of the Middle Ages, they also represent the entwining of art and money, a corruption rather than a spirituality. Ultimately, with the words, "I just want to be pure," Jim could is expressing a longing to return to innocence, perhaps the pure spirituality that the church once symbolized.

Other Musings on Symbols

In the film V for Vendetta, the main character “V” explains why he thinks that blowing up Parliament will free England of the Norsefire government.

“...A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. A symbol, in and of itself is powerless, but with enough people behind it, blowing up a building can change the world."

Author Jess Walter writes about symbols in his non-fiction book, Ruby Ridge, an account of the Randy Weaver family and the stand-off with federal agents. Since then, the words “Ruby Ridge” have come to symbolize any standoff between an individual or small group and the federal government, as in “We don’t want this to become another Ruby Ridge.”

Walter continues to write in the Introduction: “There is little wonder that for many it has become a symbol for government tyranny. But symbols are nothing more than half-truths and they fall short of explaining a place as hard and remote as Ruby Ridge.”

Symbols are powerful tools, and even those using symbols cannot control the meanings attached to them.

Walter, Jess. Ruby Ridge. (Originally published as Every Knee Shall Bow). New York: Regan Books. 1995, 2002.

The copyright of the article Literary Technique Symbol in Human Life and Art in World Literatures is owned by Teresa Knudsen. Permission to republish Literary Technique Symbol in Human Life and Art in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.