The Use of Symbolism by Various Writers, Essay Example

William Shakespeare’s Othello is the story of an outsider, albeit a relatively well-placed one: Othello is a black man, a so-called ‘Moor’, who has become a high-ranking Venetian commander. Consequently, race forms one of the major themes of the play, a central component of Othello’s struggle for identity (Kolin 1). And yet, Othello’s military command and Christian faith mark him as identifying with mainstream Venetian society (Reynolds and Fitzpatrick 204). However, his marriage to Desdemona occasions the jealousy of her former suitor Roderigo and the wrath of her father, the Venetian senator Brabantio (Kolin 1). As Kolin explains, this theme of ‘miscegenation’ was an inflammatory issue, as was the theme of adultery: race, sex, violence and jealousy pervade this play (1). In fact, the symbolism of Othello’s race may be more complex: the fact that the character is Christian, together with his personal qualities, apparently endeared him to Elizabethan audiences (Reynolds and Fitzpatrick 204). By contrast, Iago, a white man, is the self-confessed ‘devil’ of the story: the implication may well have been a reversal of prejudiced expectations about these two men (204).

But what sort of man is Othello, the Moor of Venice? First and foremost, he is a man with many great qualities: a strong and capable military commander, he possesses a great nobility of spirit and generosity of character (8-10). And yet, he is too easily swayed by Iago’s lies about Desdemona’s supposed infidelity: he trusts Iago to a fault, rather than trusting his own wife (8-9). Othello has a great deal of confidence in his own abilities, and rightly so: he is a very capable commander for Venice against the Ottoman Turks (Bloom xii, 26). However, he is haunted by the prejudices arrayed against him, and arguably falls prey to the worst caricatures of the barbaric ‘Other’, indicating that he has internalized the racist discourses to which he has been subject: thus, his murder of Desdemona and his suicide (Reynolds and Fitzpatrick 205).

Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations is the coming-of-age story of Pip, a young orphan boy in search of identity, family, and fortune. A key theme in Pip’s quest for identity is the importance of the virtues of generosity, charity, and compassion for others, as exemplified by the characters of Herbert, Joe Gargery, and Pip (Newey 177). This is contrasted with both the quest for lucre in the form of monetary gain, and Miss Havisham’s quest for revenge (Hrubes 4-5, Newey 177). Where Pip is naïve, trusting, and giving, despite his background of abandonment and abuse, Miss Havisham has responded to her former lover’s betrayal with spite, bitterness, and a desire for revenge: she has molded her young protégé Estella, the object of Pip’s most ardent desires, into an instrument for achieving vicarious revenge (Hrubes 4-5).

Fundamentally, Great Expectations is a novel about consumption and giving. As Houston explains, capitalism and money culture pervades the novel: Pip is “made” into a gentleman thanks to Magwitch’s largesse; he becomes re-produced or remade by money (161). Of course, as Houston explains, “Pip thinks and hopes that ‘Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale,’ but he is repulsed that he is the gentleman Magwitch has ‘made’ and ‘owns’” (161). The world that Pip confronts is a world of “consume or be consumed”, symbolized by Pip’s rising and falling fortunes: he either gorges himself or he starves (161). In a sense, Dickens uses market relations to hint at or suggest cannibalism, hence the seemingly ever-present fear of being eaten that pervades the novel (161). But in essence, Pip’s relationship with Magwitch symbolizes the remedy for this situation: Pip is initially repulsed by Magwitch, but then shows him compassion by giving him succor (Meckier 167). Magwitch, in turn, becomes Pip’s patron, and Pip uses this connection to help Herbert (167). Finally, Pip remains true to Magwitch, even after the ex-convict is captured (168). This is the essence of his story: the triumph of compassion and selflessness over greed, ‘cannibalistic’ consumption, and revenge.

Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is the singularly unsettling tale of a man who wakes up as a giant insect. In essence, the unfortunate Gregor Samsa is having a crisis of identity that pertains to family relations and work: after all, as Swinford explains, after waking up as an insect Samsa is “initially concerned that he will miss a business appointment” (216). In this vein, Gallagher notes that prior to his transformation, Samsa was working as a salesman to provide food for the family, in his father’s stead (125). Thus, one possible reading of this strange fable is that Gregor’s insect body is, in essence, a curse for attempting to usurp or transgress the conventional, patriarchal order (125). With Gregor reduced to a loathsome insect, his father can reoccupy his ‘rightful’ sphere, reclaiming his place as the head of the family (125).

In fact, Kafka himself conceived of the monstrosity in question as the result of feeling trapped by family life, financial problems, and work-related stresses (Gallagher 126). Moreover, these various duties and responsibilities made it difficult for Kafka to pursue his writing (127). Thus, it seems to be the case that Samsa stands as a proxy for Kafka: his transformation is a way for Kafka to project his own experiences of isolation and alienation onto Gregor (127). Alienation is, of course, a major theme in the story, and it seems to have Marxist connotations: Gregor the human yielded the product of his labor to his father, i.e. he was alienated from it (127). Gregor the insect is the result of this transformation writ upon the body: his alienation from work has become ‘externalized’ on the canvas of his own body (127). And as an insect, Gregor is largely cut off from his family: he occupies a strange, liminal state throughout the story, in that he is cut off from his family and yet continues to live in their house (Swinford 216).

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, published in 1847, is the scandalous Victorian story of a woman who dares to pursue her passions (Brennan 100, Teachman 4-6). To call this story radical by the literary conventions of its time would be putting it mildly: Jane Eyre broke with the Romantic conventions of “young, dark, and handsome Byronic antiheroes” to tell the story of a young woman of humble social status and her paramour, Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester, a rather ordinary-looking middle-aged man (Teachman 1). As Teachman explains, Jane Eyre is the quintessential ‘plain Jane’: unlike the vast majority of Victorian heroines, she is not outstandingly attractive, and she has no fortune whatsoever, nor any hope of acquiring one (1). Instead, hers is something of a Cinderella story, minus the Prince Charming and the fairytale ending (2-6). Brought up by her abusive relatives, the Reeds, Jane is mistreated and spitefully ill-used (2). And yet, she has passion, despite the best efforts of the Reeds to drive it out of her (2-3). At Lowood, a school that trains girls of low socio-economic status for lives of servitude, Jane endures many more injustices, privations, and punishments—and yet, she endures and becomes qualified for the position of governess (3).

Fittingly, Bronte employs nature symbolism for her passionate, strong-willed heroine: as Brennan explains, Bronte endows birds and trees with rich symbolic significance, but the moon is the central symbolic referent (20). In fact, the moon is virtually “a character in its own right”, an ally and source of inspiration for Jane in her travels (20). This is a fitting symbol, because historically the moon is associated with “the spiritual, feminine and the irrational” (21). In one key scene, the moon is seen to intervene in order to convince Jane not to become Rochester’s mistress, a directive Jane Eyre obeys (21). Evidently, Bronte has taken the traditional symbolism of the moon and, in a sense, subverted it: the moon is an ally for her passionate heroine, but it can also be a voice of reason and wisdom (21). In the end, Jane is able to master her passions, even as Rochester has become a ‘tamed’ man (Teachman 6).

Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener is, like other stories here considered, concerned with materialism and capitalism, the love of lucre, versus the more noble human qualities (Talley 87-88). Bartleby, the titular character, undergoes a progressive withdrawal and isolation from everyday life, much to the bafflement of the narrator, the man who hired him (87). Bartleby begins by withdrawing from his responsibilities at work, but ultimately extends this pattern of withdrawal to practically every necessary activity in life, i.e. eating (86).The central symbolic motif is referred to in the subtitle, “A Story of Wall-Street”: as Talley explains, this is not only a reference to capitalism, but also to the isolating effect of walls (87). The offices of the Narrator are hedged about and circumscribed by walls, Bartleby erects walls about himself by becoming unresponsive to the outside world, and Bartleby finally dies in prison, surrounded by walls (87).

But the story is not only the story of Bartleby, it is also the story of the Narrator. As Reiff explains, the Wall Street lawyer is initially a rather self-absorbed and self-interested man, especially with respect to Bartleby: committed to the easiest course of action, he ignores Bartleby’s recalcitrance (98). With time, however, he becomes aggravated, and decides to resort to more charitable measures in order to feel good about himself (98). Still later, he begins to become genuinely concerned about Bartleby, though he is disgusted by his own realization that he is unable to help Bartleby (98). Torn between his selfish impulses and a desire to follow Christ’s example of charity and loving-kindness, the Narrator relocates to get away from Bartleby, only to return to minister to him (99). Thus, this is a cautionary tale and something of a parable: the Narrator discovered his own humanity, and his sense of shared humanity with Bartleby, even as Bartleby lost his humanity (99).

Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple is a masterpiece: the coming-of-age story of a young black woman in Georgia in the 1930s. It would be difficult to imagine a more heartbreaking story: Celie is raped and impregnated by her own father, denied an education, and beaten by both her father and her husband (Showalter n.p.). And yet, this is a magical story, a triumphant paean to the spirit of the main character: Celie perseveres, writing her letters to God, and gradually she learns to stand up for herself (Showalter n.p.). This story is rich in symbolism: for Celie, God may be mysterious, but God (no gender is specified) is never absent. For Celie, God is a constant in a life filled with misery, suffering, and abusive men: God stands as a kind of ideal parental figure, unlike her abusive and then absent mother, and her incredibly abusive father. Shug Avery is another symbol: “Shug Avery was a woman. The most beautiful woman I ever saw” (Walker 6). For Celie, Shug Avery is an archetypal figure: she represents beauty, glamour, and a free-wheeling, independent style of life. “An now when I dream, I dream of Shug Avery. She be dress to kill, whirling and laughing” (6). Eventually, Celie enters a sexual relationship with Shug (81, 269). Of course, the color purple itself is a symbol, typically juxtaposed with red: when Celie gets new clothes, she wants “Somethin purple, maybe little red in it too” (20). In Showalter’s words, Walker “made purple the symbol of African-American womanhood” (n.p.). There is a good point of comparison here with the great feminist poet Adrienne Rich: her father emphasized family heritage and religion rather than knowledge of reading and writing (Langdell 12). However, her father also brought her up as a son, and equipped her with “the intellectual, moral, and personal strength necessary to survive in a climate hostile to women” (12). Adrienne Rich channeled her experiences into an insightful critique on patriarchy as “a system that denies women direct access to what it considers sacred” (12).

These six stories treat with similar themes: the struggle for identity. Each style is well suited to the story the author is telling: Jane Eyre and The Color Purple as autobiographies, Othello as a great tragedy, all use language to enhance the story. Tragic or triumphant, these six protagonists engage with the considerable forces arrayed against them in a quest for identity.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. Othello. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2008. Print. Bloom’s Shakespeare Through the Ages Ser.

Brennan, Zoe. Bronte’s Jane Eyre. New York: Continuum International, 2010. Print.

Gallagher, David. Metamorphosis: Transformations of the Body and the Influence of Ovid’s

Metamorphoses on Germanic Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The Netherlands: Rodopi, B.V., 2009. Print.

Houston, Gail T. “’Pip’ and ‘Property’: the (Re)Production of the Self in Great Expectations.”

 Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2000. 155-166. Print.

Hrubes, Martina. Great Expectations: The Strange Romance of Pip and Estella. Munich, Germany: GRIN-Verlag, 2005. Print.

Kolin, Philip C. “Blackness Made Visible: A Survey of Othello in Criticism, on Stage, and on

Screen.” Othello: New Critical Essays. Ed. Philip C. Kolin. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2002 1-88. Print.

Langdell, Cheri C. Adrienne Rich: The Moment of Change. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004. Print.

Meckier, Jerome. Dickens’s Great Expectations: Misnar’s Pavilion Versus Cinderella.

 Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2002. Print.

Newey, Vincent. The Scriptures of Charles Dickens: Novels of Ideology, Novels of the Self.

Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2004. Print.

Reiff, Raychel H. Herman Melville: Moby Dick and Other Works. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 2008. Print.

Reynolds, Bryan, and Joseph Fitzpatrick. “Venetian Ideology or Transversal Power? Iago’s Motives and the Means by Which Othello Falls.” Othello: New Critical Essays. Ed.

Philip C. Kolin. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2002. 203-220. Print.

Showalter, Elaine. A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. New York: Random House, 2009. Print.

Swinford, Dean. “The Portrait of an Armor-Plated Sign: Reimagining Samsa’s Exoskeleton.” Kafka’s Creatures: Animals, Hybrids, and Other Fantastic Beings. Ed. Marc Lucht.

Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010. 211-236. Print.

Talley, Sharon. Student Companion to Herman Melville. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007. Print.

Teachman, Debra. Understanding Jane Eyre. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. Print.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1982. Print.