Abstruse Symbols Profound Meanings

The school, which appeared earliest and influenced broadest among the European and American Modernism literature, is Symbolism. In 1886, the name of "Symbolism" first appeared in France. The international Symbolist movement emerged between 1886 and 1914 radiated originally from France but producing great writers and great poetry elsewhere: Yeats in Ireland,Eliot in England and Wallace Stevens in America. As a branch of modern literature, Symbolism permeates every types of literature. Symbolism is widely employed in some literary works, where it plays an important role. Symbolism can be defined as the art of expressing ideas and emotions not by describing them directly, nor by defining them through overt comparisons with concrete images, but by suggesting what these ideas and emotions are, by re-creating them in the mind of the reader through the use of unexplained symbols. In other words, symbolism is a kind of literary technique, which enables the details of a certain novel to become rich in associated meaning and significance.· As a literary technique, symbolism in American literature has a great tradition, and it plays an important role in Katherine Anne Porter's short stories. As Porter says, "Symbolism happens of its own self and it comes out of something so deep in your own consciousness and your own experience that I don't think that most writers are at all conscious of their use of symbols. I never am until I see them. They come of themselves because they belong to me and have meaning to me, but they come of themselves. I have no way of explaining them…And I suppose you don't invent symbolism."This thesis attempts to explore the technique of symbolism in Katherine Anne Porter's four short stories—Flowering Judas, The Grave, Theft and The Jilting of Granny Weatherall and to explore how the technique of symbolism helps to reveal the theme of these four short stories. This thesis mainly focuses on Katherine Anne Porter's use of symbolism, which includes symbols from nature, symbols from Christianity, symbols from archetype and other symbols. Symbols from nature will cover material symbols and colour symbols. Hats in Theft are dominant symbols, which identified characters of their social positions reveal the theme of Porter's rejection of the totalitarianism and absence of spirituality they spawned. The symbolic use of colours in The Jilting of Granny Weatherall brilliantly explores the complex theme of betrayal; for Granny has been betrayed not only by her hope for secular and divine love but also by compulsive efforts to believe in her rigidly "ordered" service to the family. Moving from natural level, we find ourselves involved in the immense web of Christian symbolism that is one of the most extraordinary and striking elements in these four short stories. Katherine Anne Porter's early training and background offered her a rich store of religious imagery and language. As Porter says, "I have a great deal of religious symbolism in my stories because I have a very deep sense of religion and also I have a religious training. And I suppose you don't invent symbolism. You don't say, 'I'm going to have the flowering judas tree stand for betrayal,' but, of course, it does." In Flowering Judas, the Judas tree is a symbol for the betrayer of Christ (the legend says that its buds are red because it actually became the body of Judas, who is said to have had red hair), and the sacrament in which Laura participated—the eating of the buds of the Flowering Judas—is a sacrament, not of remembrance, but of betrayal. "Flowering Judas", as title and as Christian symbol, deeply reveals the theme of betrayal in Flowering Judas.Symbols from Archetype are also of great importance. The powerful image in The Grave, is "discovery of the dead and bleeding rabbits with the concomitant discovery of (Miranda's) own mortality and femaleness". The paradoxical dead, yet fertile, rabbit imagery is also a classical allusion to Aeschylus, Greek tragedy, Agamemnon. In Agamemnon, the...