Chapter 9: Study Project on Image, Motif, and Symbol

1.

Image

Images are a major part of how prose fiction depicts the world.  Prose essentially "paints" a world in worlds, evoking, through series of descriptions, how parts of that world look, feel, taste, sound, and smell.  In addition verbal images often contain figurative language such as metaphor, synecdoche, and simile: comparisons through which we understand what something in a story may look or feel like.  For example, consider the following image from Woolf's "Kew Gardens:"

The figures of these men and women straggled past the flower-bed with a curiously irregular movement not unlike that if the white and blue butterflies who crossed the turf in zig-zag flight from bed to bed.

In this sentence there are several images: the image of the way the men and women walked, the image of how the butterflies fly; and a more general image of the garden setting.  The image of how the men and women walk is produced through two strategies: 1) a comparison between the men and women and the flying butterflies (a simile—note the word "unlike"); and 2) the use of such words (diction) as "straggled" and "irregular" which convey a sense of aimlessness. The image of the flying butterflies is produced through diction ("zig-zag") and a physical description of the path of their movements.  The use of comparison and diction add information to the basic actions the image describes.  The people in this image are not merely walking, they are straggling like butterflies, zig-zagging through beds in the aimless manner of insects.

To work with images in stories, three activities are necessary:

1. identify the images
2. locate the various strategies (comparison, diction, physical description) that produce the image
3. consider what the image suggests (adds to) the representation of the basic idea.

Identify the images in the following passage from Heart of Darkness:

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway.  In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits.  A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness.  The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.

What images did you find?

Here are some of the main images:
The image of the ThamesThe image of the horizonThe image of the other boatsThe image of the shoreThe image of the sky

If we look, as we did in the previous chapter at the connotations of the language itself, there may be even more images—associations with the word "red" for example. 

We can easily locate the various strategies that produce these images.

The image of the Thames is a comparison or simile (notice the word "like"?).The image of the horizon uses a metaphor comparing the horizon to a welded joint.The image of the other boats appeals to the synecdoche (a part standing for the whole) of their sails in the sunset.The shores are compared to a flatness.The air is personified (compared to or presented as a person) as a brooding gloom.

What do these various strategies add to the basic picture of boats on a river at dusk? Further, what do the kinds of images tell us about the relation of the boats to the shore? About the mystery of the time of day?

2.

Motif

Generally, a motif is an element of a story that is repeated significantly.  Elements repeated in a motif do not always take the same form, but rather might be different ways of presenting the same idea or image.  You can identify motifs by:

1. Noting what images, actions, statements, or ideas are repeated in different forms throughout a story
2. Considering whether this repetition is significant.  For example, the word "and" is probably repeated a number of times in a story, but its repetition is rarely significant—rarely parallels ideas in a story or reveals something about the way a story is told.

Motifs are important because they can tell you a great deal about what is important in a story and how a story is told.  Working with motifs, however, means

1. Reading a passage or story closely
2. Identifying repeated elements
3. Considering how these motifs might work together
4. Considering how these motifs might be important in the story

1) Check to see if there are any motifs in the passage from Heart of Darkness in which you have already identified images. Then follow the steps for considering how they work:

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway.  In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits.  A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness.  The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.

2) You might notice three ideas that are repeated in various forms in this passage:

1. images of vanishing borders—the "interminable waterway" of the Thames, the seamless "joint" of the horizon, the haze on the shores that ends in a "vanishing flatness," and the "gloom" in the air
2. images of light—"luminous space," "gleams of varnished sprits"
3. images of darkness or impenetrability—"haze," "dark" air, "mournful gloom"

3) In what ways do these motifs  work together in this paragraph?

You might see that the images of lightness occur in the first part of the paragraph, while the images of darkness occur in the second half.  This suggests both a contrast between the two and a transition from one to the other.  The image of vanishing borders is a way of understanding the transition from light to dark.

4) How might these motifs signal or reflect what is important in the larger story?

Of course, to answer this question, you need to have read the entire story, but if you haven't, you might see the relation between images of darkness and the novella's title.  If you have read the novella, consider the ways the other motifs play through the text.  What you might notice is that images of environment somehow parallel states of mind.

3.

Symbol

The term "symbol" has two different meanings in discussions of literary texts.  It can refer to words that always and invariably refer to the same thing, throughout a story and in the culture at large.  Such things as flags, a crucifix, a stop sign, or a no smoking sign always refer to the same thing.  They are also generally iconic—pictures instead of words.  These kinds of symbols do occur in stories, but rarely as important images.

"Symbol" can also refer to an image or object that occurs in the same form with the same meaning throughout a literary text.   A symbol's meaning is established by the text itself, and the symbol works as a shorthand, often for a complex tangle of meanings.  The choice of symbol is rarely random, but instead has some relation to what it symbolizes.  For example, an American flag has 50 stars that represent the 50 states. Few images in a story are actually symbols, because they refer to different versions of a phenomenon in different ways.  Symbols are often quite obvious because they are constant.  But what symbols might represent is often complicated and requires a reading of the entire story.  In addition, a symbol may begin with one set of meanings and shift meanings slightly in the course of the story, often signaling changes in the protagonist.

To determine if an image or object is a symbol, you might consider the following:

1. Does the image or object appear in the same form throughout the text?
2. Does it always refer to the same cluster of ideas?
3. Is there some relation between the symbol and the ideas it represents?
4. How does the symbol relate to what happens in the story or its themes?

The mountain in Virginia Woolf's "The Symbol" functions as a symbol, but notably calls on all of the associations we might have with what mountains can symbolize in the course of the story.  Another example of a symbol might be the bazar in James Joyce's "Araby" which functions in the story as a constant emblem of the main character's feelings for Mangan's sister.