Friday Jan.26

Your Home work for the start of the class was to find 3 SIMILES or METAPHORS from the SCARLET IBIS.

We will then continue on page 6-7 working on SYMBOLS & THEME in class today.

SYMBOLS IN STORY

Symbols help develop the author's plot, theme, and meanings through repeated stimulation of the reader's emotions. Like character and imagery, repeated, subtle references within the narrative are intended to suggest how readers should evaluate the story, how they should find meaning in it.
So Symbols are created for the reader, not the characters of the fiction. This means that to examine symbol development in a fiction, a critic identifies how the choice, placement, and development of the specific symbols in a work may or may not lead to an emotional realization on the part of a reader.
The goal of symbolic development in fiction is the reader's emotional realization that the fictive experience imitates a desirable view of "truth," or an idealized reality of life.

THEME OF A STORY

What exactly is this elusive thing called theme?
The theme of a fable is its moral. The theme of a parable is its teaching. The theme of a piece of fiction is its view about life and how people behave.
In fiction, the theme is not intended to teach or preach. In fact, it is not presented directly at all. You extract it from the characters, action, and setting that make up the story. In other words, you must figure out the theme yourself.
The writer's task is to communicate on a common ground with the reader. Although the particulars of your experience may be different from the details of the story, the general underlying truths behind the story may be just the connection that both you and the writer are seeking.