How Symbolism Works (When It Works): A Word to Writers of Fiction

by Jonathan Rogers

In The Horse and His Boy, four travelers attempt a daring escape from the land of Calormen, a society marked by slavery and tyranny. Calormen’s cruel hierarchy requires the powerless to abase themselves before the powerful, and the powerful to abase themselves before the even more powerful.

A peasant boy named Shasta, a high-born girl named Aravis, and two talking horses light out for “Narnia and the north,” where Shasta will no longer be a slave, the horses will no longer be livestock, and Aravis can’t be forced into an arranged marriage with an old man. As our protagonists travel north, away from the land of slavery and toward the land of freedom, they change. They cease to understand themselves and others in terms of their place in a hierarchy; instead, they learn to see themselves as free people of intrinsic worth and dignity dealing with other free people of intrinsic worth and dignity. As the outward landscapes change, their inward landscapes change as well.

Is that symbolic or what?

Well, sure. The parallels between inner journeys and outer journeys are symbolic. But there are lots of different kinds of symbolism that work (or fail to work) many different ways. It has been my experience that when we talk about symbolism, we tend to emphasize those aspects that are least relevant to a person who wants to write fiction.

Most of us learned to talk about symbolism in literature class. I should know: I have gotten myself mixed up in hundreds, maybe thousands of literature classes, both as a student and as a teacher. When I was a schoolboy, I loved symbolism. It provided endless opportunities to talk smart and impress my English teachers.

In an effort to recapture my boyish enthusiasm for symbolism, I asked ChatGPT to write me a short essay about the symbolic connections between inward and outward journeys in The Horse and His Boy. (I hope you won’t judge me harshly for resorting to AI; when it comes to literary interpretation and writing advice, I have found that the robot thinks exactly like a smart but inexperienced and unoriginal high-schooler). Here are some characteristic passages from the robot’s essay.

Passage 1, on the fishing village where Shasta grew up:

At the story's outset, Shasta lives as a slave in a fishing village in southern Calormen. This setting symbolizes his initial state of bondage, both physically and spiritually. The oppressive heat, the smell of fish, and the tyrannical rule of the Calormenes all represent Shasta's lack of freedom and self-understanding.

Oppressive heat and the smell of fish are certainly aspects of Shasta’s misery, but there’s no natural connection between these things and a “lack of freedom and self-understanding.” Oppressive heat and the smell of fish could just as easily call up happy memories of summer fishing trips. And the Calormenes’ rule isn’t a “representation” of Shasta’s slavery, but its main source. As for the idea that the Calormenes’ rule represents Shasta’s lack of self-understanding—I don’t even know what that could mean.

Passage 2, on the city of Tashbaan:

Its crowded streets and oppressive atmosphere create a sense of claustrophobia that reflects the internal struggles of the characters.

Maybe. But I would say that’s one of the less interesting or relevant things one could say about Tashbaan’s crowded streets.

Passage 3, on the desert landscape:

As the characters leave Tashbaan and enter the desert, the landscape becomes a powerful symbol of their internal challenges. The harsh, unforgiving environment represents the difficulties they face in shedding their old identities and preconceptions. The desert's emptiness provides a blank slate upon which they can begin to redefine themselves, free from the constraints of their former lives.

In each of these passages, the robot treats symbolism as hidden meaning, the kind of thing a casual reader wouldn’t notice. Indeed, these examples suggest that the symbolism isn’t something one notices at all, but something one asserts or makes a case for.

You could argue that the harsh, unforgiving environment of the desert represents our protagonists’ internal difficulties. But why are we arguing at all? Nothing about that argument adds to my understanding of the characters or helps me inhabit the story more fully.

And if in the claustrophobic streets of Tashbaan, I see a hidden meaning related to our protagonists’ inner struggles, I might miss the more overt meaning, which is also more interesting. Tashbaan’s chaos and claustrophobia result from the fact that there is only one traffic law in Tashbaan: “everyone who is less important has to get out of the way for everyone who is more important.” The crowded streets are a natural symbol for the inequities of Calormene society because they are the direct result of those inequities.

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In literature class, you learned to approach a work of fiction with subtlety and nuance. But if you want to write fiction, you have to attend first to the glaringly obvious. Here’s the glaringly obvious truth about the connection between the characters’ inner journey and outer journey in The Horse and His Boy: it works as a literary symbol because it reflects the way things work in the real world. When a slave travels away from his place of enslavement toward a place where no one is a slave, his social status literally changes. It is only natural that his sense of self would change as well. When a high-born girl leaves behind all the trappings of her social status and takes off across the desert, her sense of her own worth can hardly help but change.

A symbol is a visible sign of an invisible reality. Some symbols are arbitrary: we all agree that a gold band on the left ring finger means a person is married. We could have just as easily agreed that married people wear special hats. If Martians ever visit Earth, it will take them a while to figure out that the gold band is a sign of marriage. But they will catch on pretty quickly that smoke is a sign of fire. The connection between smoke and fire is natural, not arbitrary.

Arbitrary symbols may be of some use to you as a fiction writer. Our robot said of the characters’ crossing of the river into Archenland, “The act of fording the river can be seen as a kind of baptism, washing away their old identities and preparing them for their new lives in the north.” I’m willing to give the robot that one, even if it is a bit of a Jesus-juke. I feel obliged to point out, however, that the river-crossing works as a baptism symbol because it works first as a natural symbol. When our protagonists cross the boundary river, they are literally leaving behind an old way of living and stepping into a new life.

A million invisible realities are at work in the world, all at the same time; those invisible realities always create visible signs. Supply and demand create full shelves, or empty shelves, or high prices, or low prices. Erosion creates gulleys. Love leaves tangible evidence everywhere it goes. So does selfishness. On any city street, you can observe the concrete results of urban planning, greed, neighborliness, neglect, civic pride, and a hundred other invisible forces all working at once.

If you want to write fiction, you have to get serious about the complex inter-workings between the visible and the invisible—not just in literature, but in the world. We live in a dizzyingly complex system of symbols. Seek first to harness the real-world energies of sign and meaning; start with the symbols that work in the world God made. If they work in the real world, they’ll work in your story. If you complete that work and you still want to add nuance and hidden meaning—well, I don’t suppose anybody can stop you.

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Editor’s note: If you want to learn more about writing from Jonathan, his new online creative writing class Writing Through the Wardrobe: The Horse and His Boy starts Tuesday, January 21. Find out more and register at TheHabit.co/Horse.

Jonathan Rogers is the host of The Habit Membership and The Habit Podcast: Conversations with Writers About Writing. Every Tuesday he sends out The Habit Weekly, a letter for writers. (Find out more at TheHabit.co.) He is the author of The Terrible Speed of Mercy: A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O’Connor, as well as the Wilderking Trilogy, The Charlatan’s Boy, and other books. He has contributed to the Rabbit Room since its inception.

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