Where the term comes from
Merriam-Webster defines symbolism as the art or practice of using symbols, especially by investing things with a symbolic meaning or by expressing the invisible or intangible through visible representations. It also lists the sense of a system of symbols, and dates the word's first known use to 1654.
The Poetry Foundation describes a symbol as something in the world of the senses, including an action, that reveals or signals something else, often abstract. Its example is the rose, long considered a symbol of love. It says that for a metaphor to be symbolic, one of its elements must reveal something transcendental, and it quotes Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren in Understanding Poetry (3rd ed., 1960): "The symbol may be regarded as a metaphor from which the first term has been omitted." It cites W. B. Yeats's rose on the cross, which stands for the joining of flesh and spirit.
An example
Anneke Roux has just buried her husband, a piano tuner. In his workshop there is an upright piano that he never finished. Anneke tunes everything else in the shop but leaves its lid closed. In chapter four a customer asks if it is for sale, and she says it is broken. In chapter nine she finds the missing key in his coat pocket and puts it on the shelf without a word. Only in the last chapter does she lift the lid and press a single note. The piano is never called a symbol. It is a real instrument with a real job in the plot, and it also stands for the part of her marriage she has not finished grieving.
Common mistakes
- Pointing at the symbol with narration, such as "the piano, like their love, was out of tune".
- Using an object that has no literal role in the story, so it exists only to mean something.
- Stacking symbols until a reader cannot tell which one matters.
- Relying on meanings the reader may not share, such as a colour or animal whose significance depends on one culture.
- Mixing up symbolism and motif. A symbol stands for something; a motif is a detail that recurs.
How to check your manuscript
Pick the object or image you think is a symbol and ask three questions: what does it do in the plot, what does it mean beyond the plot and does that meaning change by the end? If the first answer is "nothing", it is decoration. If the third is "no", the symbol may be flat. Read the scenes where it appears and cut any line that tells the reader what to think of it. For related terms, see theme, foreshadowing and archetype.
In Musael, world and characters shows where each entry is mentioned in the text, so you can trace an object that carries meaning across the book.