Well there have certainly been oodles of books written about this device, and I have nothing new to bring; but I’ll say what I can, to give some idea of what goes on in my editorial mind. I feel pretty ignorant and wussy around symbols. They’re very big, maybe too big. They hold us in their stomachs, as if we’re symbiotic bacteria. When things go badly, we get shat out. Clint Eastwood illustrates that in his film, "Flags of Our Fathers".
Keep reminding yourself: I’m imagining something.
[Skip the next 2 paragraphs if you already know about socio-psychological symbols, e.g. flags and such, as you probably do.]
(1) Okay maybe I’m being too political, but I want to put forth the point that symbols are innately very powerful, and that that is related to their similarity to myths, in that often we are intellectually aware that somebody else’s myth or symbol is a myth or symbol, but we think that ours is fact, history, or a good shared image that stands for what we stand for. We do recognize the power of some of our symbols, such as the American flag or the cross (to use the examples that probably are symbolic for the largest group of Barnwood readers), because we know their intellectual meaning, including history and heroes, people who have died “for” them, ie for us and what we hold dear. On the surface, symbols stand for, communicate, our identity, including values, our stories. They are central things, become images, in our mythic tales. And of course that makes us very vulnerable to their misuse by people who want the power to manipulate us, and who present themselves as the keepers of our sacred symbols.
(2) We are so vulnerable, and symbols are so powerful, because below the surface, in the chthonic regions of our brains and societies, symbols don’t just stand for us (as signs), we participate in their lives, by giving them ours [where did I first read that stand for/participate in way of putting it? Tillich? Sometimes I feel like I’m “floating in a tin can,” with everything I remember moving in the opposite direction]. We live our symbols’ patterns of ideas and actions and institutions that, just as we live our myths, on “conscious” and “unconscious” levels, generally without reflecting the fact that we are in their grips, thus reducing the emotional charge of their power and thus reducing them substantially to signs, over which we could gain some power to accept or resist their content. When I realized that my religious symbol had become for me a “religious symbol” like other people’s, I knew I was no longer a member of that religion, although I still affirmed, and indeed lived, some of that religion’s moral ideas.
I.e. symbols are very powerful, living mainly on the unconscious level, charged with emotional energy, mapping vast tracks of content, giving us identity, molding our thoughts and actions. The power is inherent in the symbol, the symbolizing, the way the brain works; the power is not inherent in the thing. Ahab’s symbol is Ahab, what’s yours? (What’s your story, and what is its central “thing,” image?)
What is your ghost? What haunts you? A red letter? The Mississippi River, the Congo River? That green light across the bay? Those tall buildings across the river through the morning mist? Fortunately, when we, as readers, are in the grip of a literary symbol, we are experiencing vicariously, we can put the book down, get off the boat and go do the laundry. It’s just a literary device. We are insulated—by the fact of art and good artistry—from the danger of monomaniacal obsession with the idea that the meaning of the thing is one-dimensional and only what it means to us (or in the case of propaganda, what we are told it means to us). At any point we can remind ourselves: I’m imagining something. And if necessary, we can, as Hillman suggests, re-imagine it, and ourselves, into a new perspective. Indeed, experiences of literature can help us re-imagine (and build the skill of re-imagining, of telling another meaningful story, singing a different song).
If, for a while, we forget to remind ourselves, don’t want to remind ourselves, stay on board and don’t get to the laundry, we are good readers in the grip of a powerful artistry.
[As soon as I can, I'll add some examples that I think make good poetry.]
Tom Koontz, Editor
Barnwood magazine
Barnwood Press