Symbolism In 'Searching For Summer'

Do you ever take anything for granted? In the book Searching for Summer, author Joan Aiken uses imagery, mood, and word choice to help the reader understand the concept of taking things for granted. The main characters Tom and Lily decide to go searching for sunlight on their honeymoon due to the fact that they live in a world where there is no sunlight. Fallout from nuclear testing in the 80’s (1980’s or 2080’s- we do not know), has blocked all of the sunlight. By using specific elements, the author helps us to feel how the characters did in the story.

Within Shaun Tan’s picture books ‘The Red Tree’ and ‘The Lost Thing’, surrealism is utilised to deliver the themes of hope and rejection. Visual techniques and extended metaphors aid in the transmission of these themes. Symbolism, colour, positioning, drawing styles, and cultural referencing are techniques used to convey the messages. Tan utilises these techniques to help the reader realise, and interpret, for themselves the overarching messages within in the picture books.

The word sadness immediately stands out in the title indicating opposite feelings normally associated with wedding dresses. To continue, the words “sad story” are repeated in lines 27 and 28 (Galvin). Galvin also repeats the word closet in line 4, 11, 14, 20, and 29; alone and forgotten in the darkness of a closet emphasizes the unique perspective of abandonment as opposed to a treasured item. From there, Galvin repetitively makes additional word choices that emphasize the sad, lonely, and abandoned feelings used wedding dresses experience. Galvin makes word choices such as starless, hopeless, darkness, hollow, dump, gone, and disappear. These words all connotate a dark, lonely, and abandoned feeling. Moreover, Galvin incorporates the words yellow, smoke, and flames. Packed away wedding dresses turn an ugly yellow while the lucky wedding dresses go up in smoke and flames; neither scenario are connected to the traditional view of a keepsake. To further the unique tone Galvin associates with wedding dresses, he integrates words such as weeping, longing, and waiting. The connotation of Galvin’s word choices elicit a deep yearning for a better outcome that will unfortunately never come for his abandoned wedding

While Christine is sharing her story, the color of yellow appears again. At first, it represents failure and cowardliness, but later the color symbolizes complete peace within her. As a young child she was the

In the the novel Fahrenheit 451, multiple different abstract and concrete ideas are represented. Those ideas include the use of the outsiders to represent the old society, the use of the mechanical hound to represent the resistance to change, and the usage of the atomic bomb to symbolize a new reality. However, this specific examples of representation within the novel are highlighted due to the fact that they together compose an allegory.

The beginning of the story opens up at the beginning of the spring season. Nature and human beings alike are waking up from their slumber. Everybody is excited for warm tolerable weather. The celebration of spring gives a dreamy feel to the opening lines of the story. This leaves a dreamy feel that invokes elements from a love story. Much to the reader surprise the story is not about a romance at all, but of pilgrimage. Excited for beautiful weather everyone seems to be playing out a venture to distant lands for spiritual indulgence.

The color yellow is also used throughout the story as a symbol of corruption and death. The car that Gatsby drives was yellow and his yellow car killed Myrtle. The flower that Daisy is named after is white on the outside and yellow in the middle. Daisy seems innocent on the outside, but her real character is as corrupt and greedy as Tom's.

Symbolism is used in numerous stories to convey certain ideas to readers. In Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, symbolism plays a major role in shaping and communicating ideas. Even though the name “The Hearth and the Salamander” may symbolize many different things, it is symbolic of the different sides of Montag’s character as shown through Montag’s actions and thoughts.

Summer days are not supposed to be gray and gloomy. They are not supposed to made for the mourning of the dead. They are meant for happiness and bright white smiles, short blond hair blowing in the wind and the same time as long brown hair with flowers threaded through like stars in the sky. They are meant to be long and warm with the feeling of love in the air. Not to be marred with the thoughts of death. They are supposed to be innocent and free, not locked in a tomb, but how else was a summer day supposed to go without the puzzle piece of love in the box?

The theme of the novel is that everything is not what it seems. This was demonstrated when the author wrote “I didn't know there was a sketch on my painting. I flip over the paper, to see what dad has written on the back. Theres the date, 5 years ago. And the words Eloise, Les Deux Chemins. Wait. I don't understand”(Friedman 158). This quote demonstrates the theme because she thought the skech was of her but it was really something else. The sketch was of her secret sister Eloise that she did not know she had. When Summer found out that the painting of what she thought was her for the past 5 years was actually someone else she was shocked and she was also upset with her dad for not telling her.

The color yellow is seems to be everywhere while reading this story. The narrator describes the color as a horrific, painstaking color that brings her sadness and depression. In contrast, many may say that the color yellow represents joy and colorfulness. The narrator sees yellow as the worse color she has seen and wishes to move rooms. “One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (78).

On this summer day we find out that the dressmaking shop owner stole a hundred and fifty thousand dollars from clients, workers, and friends, and ran off. Here the weather is used to describe how he feels. The “white-hot sunshine” is used to portray the anger and heat he feels for the woman in the following scene when the narrator finds out the lady stole the money. This goes on with the narrator going off to the roof where “the sky above was a soft quiet blue” (27), thinking about the impact the women created on him, his family, and community. The soft quiet blue here is used to describe his emotions as his anguish dematerializes and his emotions clear up to reveal the sorrow he now feels towards the woman. The narrator then uses the mist and clouds to describe the sadness he displayed that night when he realizes that he had been deluded, “The scene in front of me got misty, and I discovered that my eyes were filled with tears”

In the movie “All Summer in a Day” by Eric Kaplan, it has not stopped raining for nine years. She believes the sun was going to come out since the scientist said it would. Some kids are mean and rude to Margot but, she has one friend who was curious about the sun. While the short story has a theme on beauty deserves to be treasured by everyone, the movie focuses on friendship is to be deserved by everyone. Friendship makes the theme different because there is someone to talk to and someone can watch over the friend.

Everyone needs to believe that things are going to get better, particularly when facing challenging or troubling times. Our world is fraught with sadness, misfortune, and adversity, and the world constructed by Ray Bradbury in “All Summer in a Day” is no different. Unending rain, gray skies, and endless dark doldrums beneath the surface of Venus plague the lives of the young children in his short story. And yet, every night when they go to sleep, the young protagonists hope for more. Despite being surrounded by a gray plague of ceaseless rain, the children dream of the sun. In “All Summer in a Day,” Bradbury uses the sun throughout the text to symbolize hope.

The actual coming of the bride to Yellow Sky is also important, because the bride’s coming to Yellow Sky is “an occasion for change” (Gale 3). The bride has no name to symbolize the industrialized form of wife, for “she was neither pretty, nor was she very young,” (Crane 3) and that it “was apparent that she had cooked, and expected to cook, dutifully” (Crane 3). Toward the end of the story, Scratchy “was like a creature allowed a glimpse at another world,” (Crane 91) when he sees Potter’s bride. This is critical to the theme by seeing the changes the bride causes in one day.