06 August 2018

Jordan Takes Over: Symbolism Schmymbolism

**The first Monday of the month, I let my muse take over the blog. I apologize in advance.**

Did everyone miss me? Has there been a shortage of tissues? Wait, don't answer that.

I just want it on the record that I was dragged out of a very nice nap in order to write this blog post. But we've got this new thing going that I don't have to write a post *every* month, but if the first Monday of the month is after the first Wednesday, Sarah says I have to. Something about how her IWSG posts will always steal my thunder and I won't get any attention and I do not like that one little bit. So, here we are! I get this week, bitches!

Anyway, what to talk about? If you did read Sarah's post last week, she mentioned how Chapter 16 has a lot of potential symbolism that hasn't really been properly explored. To which I would say, these are things that actually happened in my life and it's not my fault if you read so much into it.

Ok, ok. OK!!!! So everything in a novel is supposed to serve a purpose, right? So I guess these things need to be figured out so that they're not just stupidly thrown around wherever. BECAUSE if a character lets me use a red blanket in this chapter, and then buys me a red scarf in the next one, you're supposed to stop and think about that, right? What does it mean????? 

Well, the blanket and the scarf are protective symbols, like, this person is trying to protect me (pfft like I need it), from a) himself and b) the cold mean world, yada yada. But **RED** is important here. Red is representative of sin/desire/passion. But the blanket/scarf is more about love/protection. Because the fact that this character has two sides is something that comes up CONSTANTLY, i.e. the structured/caring side vs the chaotic/desire driven side. He's not one side or the other; he's both--which is represented by these objects. ALSO. What else is red? Blood. Which makes you think back to an earlier chapter where I tried to help make dinner but ended up cutting my finger with a huge freaking knife. And this is the idea that he can try to protect me, but bad things will still happen.

I just bored you to tears, didn't I? Because you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. But even if you had read the book, would you be able to pick up on all of this just by reading about a damn blanket? Plus symbolism is always up to interpretation, right? Someone may read the totally wrong thing from it. Or they may not pick up on it at all.

But anyway, that whole paragraph of nonsense just leads me to realize that we DID figure out some of this symbolism a long time ago so why am I even here?

Because I guess there's MORE. *sigh* We have to figure out why there's a moment while making chocolate chip cookies where it has to be explained why salt is used in baking. And apparently that has to mean something. I don't know. I'm tired. I think I'll sleep on it.

JP

4 comments:

  1. Good thing they were red and not black. That's beyond blood - that's dead.

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  2. Sleep solved everything, eh, Jordan?

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  3. I love to slip in symbolism here and there. It's fun. :)

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  4. It's good to have a character that has more than one side to him or herself. I've read other stories where certain characters were totally one-dimensional, and that made the stories a lot less interesting.

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