Symbolism

In Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, the symbol of Angela’s red flapper dress highlights the pain of lost dreams. This symbol is very important because it highlights Angela’s youthful dreams, the beginning of Frank’s dreams and also how Angela’s dreams end. Frank uses Angela’s red dress to make uniforms for a soccer game against the rich kids. During the game, Frank scores a goal to win the game.

This goal gives him hope that he will amount to something. Using Angela’s dress for uniforms shows the sacrifice of her dreams to make new dreams for Frank.It opens his eyes to new hope and a new outlook on his dreams. In Angela’s Ashes, the red dress represents Angela’s youth and dancing days. The dress is kept locked away in a trunk with important papers from her life. Keeping the dress with passports, birth certificates and her marriage certificate shows how important the dress is to Angela. Frankie remembers the dress in the trunk as “…her bright red flapper dress with pgles and black frills she brought all the way from America.

She wants to keep that dress forever to remind herself she was young and dancing” (252).A flapper dress was worn during the Roaring Twenties. The Roaring Twenties were a time of fun, parties, dancing, jazz music and economic prosperity. Because Angela owned a flapper dress, she probably went to parties and enjoyed dancing before she went to America. Life was better for her than when she got older and was married with children. Mr. Clohessy tells Frankie “…I knew your mother well.

Danced with her…danced with her I did below in the Wembley Hall and a champion dancer she was too” (164). This tells you that Angela was once a happy, carefree girl who enjoyed dancing.This time in her life was full of dreams and hope for the future. Saving the dress was a sign of those good times. Mr. Clohessy also makes Angela cry for her lost dreams when he says: “We could have won competitions, Angela. Fred and Ginger would have been lookin’ over their shoulders but you had to run off to America.

Aw, Jesus” (167). These happy times contrast with the hungry, dark times in Ireland when she is on the dole and has no money to feed her children. It also is a contrast with the consumption that Mr. Clohessy and many others have and die from.During the story, Frankie talks about how bleak life is, how hungry and how poor they are. Putting the dress away in the trunk is also like locking her dreams away. Angela often stares into the fire and she is probably remembering better times and regretting what her life has become.

Frankie takes the dress out of the trunk and using it to make uniforms for his soccer team “The Red Hearts of Limerick”. He destroys his mother’s dress, which is like destroying her dreams but is also symbolic of his dreams being set free.Frankie makes red hearts from part of the dress that the team pins to their uniforms even though they look like red rags. The boys play a soccer game against a team of rich boys and Frankie scores the winning goal. He goes from feeling doomed because when he finds his mom’s dress he also finds out from his friend Mikey that he was born a bastard, to feeling hope because God wouldn’t let him score a goal if he was doomed. It comes straight to my foot and all I have to do is swivel to the left and swing that ball straight into the goal. There’s a whiteness in my head and I feel like a boy in heaven.

and I keep thinking of the way the ball came to my foot and surely it was sent by God or the Blessed Virgin Mary who would never send such a blessing to one doomed for being born in half the time and I know as long as I live I’ll never forget that ball coming from Billy Campbell, that goal. (256-257) This is a very important feeling for Frank. He feels like he has something to live for. He pauses after he scores the winning goal because he feels like he has been blessed by God. He thinks to himself that he can’t be doomed if he was blessed enough to score the game winning goal.This sheds new light on Frank’s hopes and dreams. He knows now that if he works hard, gets a job and saves up money that he will be able to return back to America.

As Frank’s dreams continue to grow, his mother’s dreams fade. She has given up all hope of her dreams for herself but still wants the best for her children. She loves her children even though she never comes right out and says it but you know she loves them because she will go on the dole and do without for herself so that her kids can eat. She even does distasteful things for Laman to keep a roof over their heads and some food on the table.Angela’s flapper dress is a strong symbol in the book. It illustrates that Angela was a young, carefree girl before she got pregnant and married Malachy. Little by little the poverty, Malachy’s drinking, problems with her relatives about Malachy, and losing her children chipped away at her hopes and dreams until there was nothing left for her but to smoke cigarettes and stare into the fire.

The last of Angela’s dreams, ashes dying away in the fireplace. At this same time, Frank takes his mother’s dress and makes soccer uniforms with it. When he scores the winning goal in a game against the rich kids his dreams take flight.He dares to dream of a better life and saves money to return to America. He often saves money by doing things that would upset his mother if she knew about them but Frank feels the end result will be worth it. He will make sure his dreams become a reality however he needs to do it. This is similar to how his mother keeps a roof over their heads and food on the table.

She does whatever she has to for her family, even if that means giving up her own dreams. She may not have realized that she was doing this but the red dress symbolically shows this.

is a commonly used literary device in different forms of literature to communicate some of the hidden meanings in them. It is also employed by the writer to express some characters’ emotional effects. In the piece, Ibsen employs the use of symbolism to communicate the relationship between Nora and Torvald Helmer, while at the same time conveying some complex concepts and ideas. In fact, symbolism elucidates the hidden conflicts between Nora, her husband and other people around them.

Some of the important symbols used in the piece include the Christmas tree, the letters, the locked mailbox, Dr. Rank’s calling cards and the Tarantella, which all give an outlook of what happens in the story, more so the relationship among the characters (Ibsen 44). For instance, the Christmas tree is a symbol of life, which Nora lives.

This is accompanied by outright images of stove, candles, and fire, which are used as symbols of comfort and warmth. Ibsen is a creative writer who makes his piece more interesting and attention-catching. For instance, he begins by exposing the readers to the experiences of luxury, harmony, and love, and then follows it with symbols that show disappointment, failure, and despair. As the story ends, the readers see Nora’s black scarf, which symbolizes death and sorrow.

The same is depicted in Dr. Rank’s calling card that has black crosses, which the readers can connect with Nora’s multicolored scarf that she during the practice of the tarantella dances. This symbolizes her dreams and desires, but more importantly, the black scarf can be linked to the death, which is also heard in her communication with Dr. Rank.

There is similarly a good and maintained room, which shows the readers about a good life, but as the readers continue to interact with the story, they question if indeed Nora has a good life (Ibsen 2). For example, Torvald prohibits Nora from eating macaroons, a symbol of control and dictatorship.

The readers see this clearly, as she disobeys him. Nora claims that she has always obeyed and followed the orders given by her husband, but in this one, she proves to be a disobedient woman. In fact, macaroons are used to symbolize deceit, disobedience, and . Another symbolism is the kind of conversation that Norah has about the dolls she bought for their daughter. Torvald tells her that even if the dolls are cheap, it does not have any significant effect because she would not take care of them.

This is a depiction that her daughter’s behavior is similar to Nora’s who has never been keen in taking care of the family. It implies that despite his effort, Nora keeps leaving her husband. The effects of the doll are felt towards the end of the story as Nora tells her husband that her father raised her like a doll. She says so to mean that her makes her fell unsatisfied in her marriage life.

To conclude, the symbolism in the piece makes it an excellent and unique one. The readers can deduce a lot from the symbols, including the hidden aspects of the characters and their lives. From the use of symbols and images, the readers see the inner worlds of Nora, her husband Torvald, Dr. Rank and her parents. This makes it exceptionally clear that symbolism has a greater effect in any piece of literature, and should be encouraged.

The novel The Natural by Bernard Malamud is an excellent peace of sports literature. It follows the story of Roy Hobbs as he is reaching old age in the game of baseball. The plot follows his initial talent in a scene set years before the main plot. Sixteen years afterwards the man is playing for a losing team but can still wow the audience with his raw talents. As the story progresses Roy is characterized through his actions and through the way the supporting characters view him. One symbol that made this work more resounding is the cracking of Roy’s back in the climatic game.

This event has a lot of hidden meaning, and helps convey Malamud’s theme to the audience. The first scene in the story is where Malamud expresses the level of talent “wonderboy”, as he is affectionately called, possesses. He is squaring off against a big league allstar known as the Whammer; “At thirty-three the Whammer still enjoyed exceptional eyesight. He saw the ball spin off Roy’s fingertips and it reminded him of a white pigeon he had kept as a boy, that he would send into flight by flipping it into the air.

The ball flew at him and he was conscious of its bird-form and white flapping wings he heard a noise like the bang of a firecracker at his feet and Sam had the ball in his mitt. Unable to believe his ears he heard Mercy intone a reluctant strike. ” (Malamud). This quote is significant because it expresses the potential of the protagonist. It is through these great feats of athletic prowess that we the reader gets to respect him. It makes the plot more important to the reader, as well. This all leads up to the finale with Hobb’s putting it all on the line.

The aspect of love is a component to this novel. While Roy is everything to be admired in the athletic sphere, he shows a deeply human aspect to his personality in his dealings with his love interest; “Noticing Toomey watching her, Roy stole a quick look. He caught the red dress and a white rose [he was] drawn by the feeling that her smile was for him she seemed to be wanting to say something, and then it flashed on him the reason she was standing was to show her confidence in him he became aware that the night had spread out in all directions and was filled with an unbelievable fragrance. (Malamud) Malamud gives his character a truly human characteristic which makes him all the more enduring. As the novel’s rising action takes place, the “natural’s” intentions are called into question. During the climatic scene, Roy fouls a ball into the stands that injures Iris. During this at bat, Roy also splits his bat, named wonder boy, into two pieces. This is a multilayered piece of symbolism which helps express the author’s true intentions upon writing this novel. The fact that he injures Iris expresses how he is hurting the one’s he loves through his sports persona.

He must rectify the relationship between his athletic personality and his human one. It is also significant how it happened on a “foul” ball, which suggests a seedy side to the tone of this event. Finally, the fact that his bat is split into two pieces shows that he is finally ready to move on from the game he spent his life pursuing. In a conversation late in the novel Roy says this brilliant quote; “Experience makes good people better. ” She was staring at the lake. “How does it do that? ” “Through their suffering. ” “I had enough of that,” he said in disgust. We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness All it taught me was to stay aware from it. I am sick of all I have suffered. ” She shrank away a little. ” (Malamud) This is a fitting way to leave the reader of the noel, and let them know what Malamud was getting at. The characterization and symbolism of this book really make it a significant contribution to sports literature. He is a larger than life figure with wholly human emotions. He is an epic hero for a contemporary period, and Malamud communicates this beautifully.

The Symbolism in “A Rose for Emily” “I want the best you have… I want arsenic. ” Emily was purchasing rat poison. Did she really have rats? Or did she poison her husband Homer Barron? William Faulkner used a few ciphers in “A Rose for Emily” to get his readers to explore their imagination. It is an extremely suspenseful, on the edge of your seat, story with a shocking ending. It is a short story about an old women who loses her father and eventually her husband; she is the talk of the town and after she dies, everyone realizes exactly how insane she was.

Faulkner uses many symbols that have meanings of their own and also for something else. “A Rose for Emily” has numerous symbols. Some more important the others, a minor symbol would include her father’s whip. It symbolizes his control and domance over her. It was as if he was fighting off all the men in Emily’s life with his whip. It may also suggest that he is incredibly strict with her and didn’t want her to have much of a social life. When Emily’s dad died, Emily was devastated; she did not want to leave his body. Shortly after, Emily took comfort in a man named Homer Barron.

The death of Emily’s father left her miserable, when Homer left town for a few days, she thought she might loose him like she did her father. When he returned home, everything went down hill. “And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron and of Miss. Emily for sometime. ” A slightly more important symbol would be the old, creepy house where Miss. Emily lived. The house symbolized a mystery; the whole town thought Miss. Emily was bizarre and that house just added to their suspicion. The house had a distinct smell. It was a kind of rotting smell, as if something, or maybe someone, had died in there and was never disposed of properly.

It got so bad the mayor, along with a couple other residents of the town, snuck onto the property and put deodorizer on her front lawn. After Emily’s death, the towns people were finally able to explore the house. What they found wasastonishing. Everything seemed somewhat normal up until they got to the locked door. The men broke it down and found a room that looked as if to be prepared for a wedding covered completely with an inch or two of dust. When they turned around, they found a decomposing body! The last symbol was definitely the most important.

Next to the body was a long gray hair. To some it might not mean anything; but to other intellectual readers, it might have great importance. If you look deeper into it, Emily had long gray hair, she was tremendously insane, and bought rat poison that would “kill anything up to an elephant. ” Could she have killed Homer? Could that long gray hair symbolize Emily going up to the room at night and cuddling up with Homer’s dead body? Faulkner leaves it up to us to decide. He uses the power of symbolism to test our mind and really make us think about what we are reading.

The symbols in this story make it what it is, a fine piece of literature. Faulkner really puts the power of symbolism to work in “A Rose for Emily. ” In this story, through the use of symbolism, Emily is exposed as the true crazy person that Faulkner met to portray her as. If you put your mind to work, Emily may have used arsenic to murder her husband, kept his body locked up in a barricaded room, and slept with his rotting corps night after night. Symbolism can make or break a story; in this case it made “A Rose for Emily” great. It constantly tests the mind and keeps the reader guessing what will happen next.