The Importance of Symbols

If a hammer and nails are a carpenter's bread of life, symbols are the same for a literature teacher or writer. How often I have heard students say, "I don't believe all this symbol stuff.  Do you really think writers purposely use symbols?"  And my answers are "Too bad" and "Yes."


We experience symbols throughout our lives and occasionally live in the moment, recognizing those symbols with an emotional reaction: repeating wedding vows as a commitment of love revisited, planning an event on a special occasion that we want to remember, recognizing objects or photos of those we have loved and perhaps lost.


Symbols are part of our lives and sometimes elicit an overwhelming emotion.  In my own experience I find some church hymns emotionally connect me to my faith and remind me of songs I shared years ago with my parents and grandparents.  Lots of emotional reaction there!


Writers use symbols, especially Christian ones in the Western world, to connect to readers in an emotional way.  Some symbols are more obvious than others, such as the scarlet letter in the book of the same title.  Others are more subtle--think of the amazing multitude of symbols in the Harry Potter books.

from www.techeblog.com

I wasn't thinking about symbols as I watched NBC Nightly News yesterday.  Recently a huge symbol--the One World Trade Center building--is rising over the other skyscrapers of New York City. It just overtook the top of the Empire State Building to become the tallest building in New York and the third tallest in the western hemisphere. Some of the workers and visitors were there on 9/11, a date fraught with symbolism for us all, but particularly for those who lost loved ones.


The amazing vista from the top--and a person has to climb stairs on the outside of the building to reach the current top, over 1,000 feet high--is vast and imposing, a panorama of modern urban life in the 21st century.

photo from forum.skyscraperpage.com

As one of the workers interviewed stated:  "There is a lot of emotion in this building."  That is particularly true since the iron workers are raising beams each day that have peoples' names scrawled on them by hand, naming the names of those who died on 9/11 and leaving messages about them.  These will become a part of this building of iron and concrete, in itself a symbol of strength and endurance.

photo from brooklynheightsblog.com

But what brought my emotional reaction were the words of Harry Smith who said that when the building is finished it will be 1776 feet tall, a number that has symbolic meaning to all of us who call ourselves "Americans."