Symbols!
Talk to me about symbolism
In high school English, much ado was made about symbolic imagery in fiction & poetry - not just metaphor & simile, but images put into a story because they mean something - Christ images being the more pervasive. Problem is, symbols culturally relevant in 1400 or even 1800 aren't necessarily easily understood or relevant today.
Excluding for the moment the "signpost" symbols - things clearly recognized in silhouette (stop, red cross, male/female symbols, etc...) and focusing more on things that could be used as an image describes in a story, or flashed past in a film (a crocus poking out of the snow, for example, is meaningful to me as a sign of life after winter (or after death), but I don't know if it is such to anyone else) - are there images-as symbols that have not lost cultural relevance? Are they any that come to mind right off the bat?
In high school English, much ado was made about symbolic imagery in fiction & poetry - not just metaphor & simile, but images put into a story because they mean something - Christ images being the more pervasive. Problem is, symbols culturally relevant in 1400 or even 1800 aren't necessarily easily understood or relevant today.
Excluding for the moment the "signpost" symbols - things clearly recognized in silhouette (stop, red cross, male/female symbols, etc...) and focusing more on things that could be used as an image describes in a story, or flashed past in a film (a crocus poking out of the snow, for example, is meaningful to me as a sign of life after winter (or after death), but I don't know if it is such to anyone else) - are there images-as symbols that have not lost cultural relevance? Are they any that come to mind right off the bat?