Recognizing symbolism in literature

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I love to read fiction and I prefer characters who are not one dimensional. I'm able to "lose myself" in the narrative and enjoy it as a "movie in my head". I can recognize that the characters go through a transformation of perspective by the end of the book . However, when I read a critical review of the book afterwards and various symbolic aspects are discussed; I'm completely lost. I just see what I read. I always felt deficient in English class at school. Is this a problem with abstract thinking?

I don't know. I've always been slightly suspicious that people who do these reviews make things up to sound clever.

I once read about an author who sat an exam paper based on a book he had written and got most of the questions wrong because the person who set the questions had assumed that there was symbolism there that really wasn't.

But with all creative writing, the wonderful thing is how every individual can take something different from it.

That is hilarious!

I too struggle to see the symbolism. I am doing a GCSE in English at the moment. One of the worst types is pathetic fallacy. It is where the author/poet uses the weather as a symbol of the mood or future of the character... GAWD it confuses me! I can pick it out better now but I still don't get it...

It's very true for me, I love books, I actually spent two hours reading earlier today, but I don't understand the symbolism that people see, in a way I'm glad that I don't, I read to escape this world not to get reminded of it in subtle ways.

I cannot recognize most symbolism.
I find myself stereotypical in that manner that I can see it only in the context of the original.
I simply cannot apply it to different situations.

Neither could I. Am better now but still not so much.
You can tell there are symbols when the writer writes out seemingly meaningless, out-of-context events. E.g. In Jane Eyre,
the red-room, the garden. In Charlotte Bronte;s "Villette" where I got my username, the NUN is a symbol, as her appearance is out of place. You may see her as a prank, but the prank isn't really important to the theme. Worrying over a nun seems trivial and boring, so it must be a symbol. More common in elements of nature, and in 19th century lit. That's why theres more to analyse in Victorian novels: so much is hidden. Even modern novels don't have that much intellect except for exceptions.

I can do that, too!

Although I often like nonfiction, such as history esp if it's more recent history, like a story I haven't heard before, or something which takes an interesting arc across a topic, some of which I know and some of which I don't know, and I can found it very satisfying for the spaces to be filled in. Okay, some books I've enjoyed are:

HARD LANDING: THE EPIC CONTEST FOR POWER AND PROFITS [whatever, whatever, during airline deregulation] by Thomas Petzinger. It's a surprisingly good book, it's loosely chronological and also loosely biographical in long sections and I think he hits the right balance.

PARTS PER MILLION: THE POISONING OF BEVERLY HILLS HIGH SCHOOL by Joy Horowitz

SPYCATCHER from more than 20 years ago, about intelligence service in Britain in the couple of decades after World War II, told by one of the participants, both scary and engrossing, and I guess an aspect of how the world used to be, and probably still is in some respects

EDGE CITY, by Joel Garreau. The car changed everything! And at least in the United States we haven't built a new traditional-style downtown since the 1920s

Prefer "isness" of things rather than symbol of it. But then, brain only making symbolic representation + big idiosyncratic metaphor of everything, anyway.

i love reading too but have the same problems. i have always thought that it's either down to my inability with abstract thinking or just that everyone interpret things differently. i have the same issue when watching films too. In order to be able to enjoy a film on dvd with friends then have a discussion after, i always have to first read the synopsis beforehand.

Now, part of the problem might be on the side of the"normal" person! (and of course, no one is truly normal, and how boring would that be anyway!)

The person is trying to showing off, or striving to meet a presumed standard and thereby be "good enough" (and oh how that echos through social interactions)

So the person is kind of pretending along. They are trying to pretend a role they think is expected of them. And that is inherently noncommunicative.

And I think the way to play this is to just let the idea be there.
'Okay, yeah . . yeah . . that's kind of neat.' be kind of positive in a low-key, brief way and let it go at that. Be open to being appreciative to the idea they've put out there without feeling you need to draw an immediate content-oriented conclusion.



And in the unlikely event the person pushes, and maybe goes over their idea all over again more emphatically
'I don't know [said good-naturedly] I'm going to have to mull it over. But it is a very interesting idea.'

In the essay "Why Nerds are Unpopular," the guy talks about that in advanced high school French class, they read a famous novel in French. At a certain point, he felt he really needed to go to the Cliff notes.

And then when it came time for the test, some of the questions seemed strangely familiar, and it occurred to him that the teacher was using Cliff notes, too! That is, everyone was pretending along. And the truth was that the book was too difficult for them.

I'll try and find a link and this passage.

Why Nerds are Unpopular , by Paul Graham, February 2003.
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

“ . . . Much of the time we were all, students and teachers both, just going through the motions.

“In my high school French class we were supposed to read Hugo's Les Miserables. I don't think any of us knew French well enough to make our way through this enormous book. Like the rest of the class, I just skimmed the Cliff's Notes. When we were given a test on the book, I noticed that the questions sounded odd. They were full of long words that our teacher wouldn't have used. Where had these questions come from? From the Cliff's Notes, it turned out. The teacher was using them too. We were all just pretending.

“There are certainly great public school teachers. The energy and imagination of my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Mihalko, made that year something his students still talk about, thirty years later. But teachers like him were individuals swimming upstream. They couldn't fix the system. . .”

Actually I have the same problem with modern art and I have a Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking. I just like to see how color, line and form interact with each other. The articles in Art News are incomprehensible to me. One of the reasons I didn't pursue a Master's is I don't think I could handle the orals. I'd have to make something up." It's about paint, any questions?" btw- I was really bad at printmaking because I can't think backwards visually.

Agreed! To me symbolism shoud be just subconscious, We don't have to "talk about it" but somewhere in the back of our minds it's there.

When I was in school and literature teachers would talk about the symbolism in literature and what different things in the book were intended to represent I thought that they were all delusional and were trying to make the books more interesting than they actually were.

I thought that art teachers often did the same thing for art.

I didn't (and still don't) understand why authors don't explain their ideas and opinions directly.

That's a big part of it, too! Many of the assigned readings, esp in high school, just aren't that good. College is more of a mixed bag.