IB English Literary Terminology- Symbols, Motifs, Allusions and Archetypes

Characteristics of Symbols

• Distinguished by concrete nature

• must be tangible/ observable

• physical object

Symbols

an object, character, event, or action that represents something else, usually a more abstract concept or idea, beyond its literal meaning within the story

Example of symbols

1. “ Letter” - The Scarlet Letter," where the letter represents Hester Prynne's adultery and the shame associated with it, serving as a visible symbol of her sin throughout the story

2. Mockingbird in "To Kill a Mockingbird": The mockingbird represents innocence and harmlessness, representing characters like Scout and Tom Robinson who are unfairly targeted

Symbol vs Metaphor

• A symbol must actually be manifest in a text. If a character is described as a “rose” but there is no physical rose in the story, that is a metaphor, not a symbol.

Motif

pattern of diction or narrative detail in a text that gains significance through repetition

Symbol vs Motif

Motif

• idea thats intangible or abstract

• represents a theme

• must recur throughout the work

Symbol

• sign, shape or object thats tangible

• represents an idea

• may appear only one or twice in a text

How to identify Motifs

Repeated object, phrase, or symbol multiple times throughout the story

example of motif

In Macbeth, blood was a recurring pattern that gained more significance as the story progressed

Archetypes

Patterns that have been repeated so often within (and occasionally across) cultural tradition that they trigger automatic abstract associations.

Common Archetypical patterns

• light/dark

• geological or geographical features: mountains, valleys, caves, roads, etc.

• Things in the sky: meteorological and atronomical

• plants

• animals

• parts of the body

• colors

• numbers

Allusions

Specific refrences to a cultural event ( including historical events) or a body of well known literature (in the Western tradition, the Judeo-Christian bible, Greek/Roman mythology, and Germanic fairy tales are most dominant).

Identifying allusions vs archetypes

The more vague and pattern based the reference, the more likely it is that it is an archetype. If I classify a character as a Christ figure because his initials are JC, he is 33 years old, and he is employed as a carpenter, my instinct is archetype