Symbols and Other Relevant Literary Elements

• Symbol – person, place or thing in a piece of literature that represents an abstract idea or concept (flower=virtue; bald eagle=America).

• Symbols in these works will reinforce the story’s main theme

• From the Poetry Foundation's Glossary of Poetic Terms: "Something in the world of the senses, including an action, that reveals or is a sign for something else, often abstract or otherworldly. A rose, for example, has long been considered a symbol of love and affection. 
  
  Every word denotes, refers to, or labels something in the world, but a symbol (to which a word, of course, may point) has a concreteness not shared by language, and can point to something that transcends ordinary experience. Poets such as William Blake and W.B. Yeats often use symbols when they believe in—or seek—a transcendental (religious or spiritual) reality. 
  
  A metaphor compares two or more things that are no more and no less real than anything else in the world. For a metaphor to be symbolic, one of its pair of elements must reveal something else transcendental. In “To the Rose upon the Rood of Time,” for instance, Yeats’s image of the rose on the cross symbolizes the joining of flesh and spirit. As Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren write in their book Understanding Poetry (3rd ed., 1960),“The symbol may be regarded as a metaphor from which the first term has been omitted.” 
  
  See also allegory and imagism."

• Allusion – phrase or figure of speech that references a specific piece of art, literary piece, cultural reference (including events, pop cult), and myths (le royale with cheese – alludes to Pulp Fiction; the British Invasion and mop heads: the Beatles)

• Allegories – extended metaphor in which you can infer the characters and the action of a story as having dual meaning that refers to and perhaps relies on an outside person/story (often religious, moral, political, social): the literal meaning within the story and the referenced person/story 

• Example: a character may have the characterization and actions that refer to Jesus Christ. Or, a story may have a plot that reminds people of a famous political scandal, like Watergate or JFK’s affair with MM!