Miss Havisham and Metaphorical Lives

I'm reading Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations right now. It's fun and funny. I don't know why I haven't read more Dickens.*

Great Expectations contains a very interesting character named Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham was jilted at the altar once upon a time and on that day her life stopped, for all intents and purposes. She left the wedding decorations up in her house, left the banquet table set, left the wedding cake on the table to be eaten at by mice and covered over the years with spider webs. Miss Havisham still wears her wedding dress, which is now yellowed and tattered. She has not moved on from the catastrophe of her ruined wedding. She is still there, all these years later. When her relatives visit, Miss Havisham points to the banquet table and declares that upon her death, she will be laid on that table and her relatives will feed on her corpse. Hyperbole, yes. Of course they won't. But she means that metaphorically, while she literally lives out the metaphor of her life stopping on her wedding day.

A character like this could not exist in real life, but she's a wonderful invention in the novel. I'm wondering if there are other examples of literary characters who are living out metaphors. In Beckett's play Endgame, the protagonist's parents are living in trash cans. The set of the play is a version of the literal inside of the protagonist's head. Kobe Abe's novel The Woman in the Dunes is about a man imprisoned in a sand pit with a widow to live a sort of Sisyphean life in captivity, but the metaphor isn't quite so literal.

I've never really done anything like this. In my novel Killing Hamlet, I have characters staying in a ruined castle, but the castle is a metaphor in the traditional sense. Had I been making a metaphor literal, I'd have had the castle fall into decay around the characters' heads but not have them notice. I'd also have had the lord of the castle gradually decay and become a ghost, with nobody noticing, including him. Maybe next time.

What I mean by a living metaphor, or a literal metaphor, would be for example instead of saying "the forest was alive" you would make the forest quite literally be a sentient being. "He was beside himself with anger" would instead be a character who actually split in two when he was angry. Things like that.

Anyway, can you think of more examples of this Miss Havisham-style character, who lives out a metaphor? Have you ever written a character like Miss Havisham?

* I do know that I loathed Hard Times, the first Dickens I ever read, and I avoided him for years upon years until I gave A Tale of Two Cities a try a few years ago. It's flawed but mostly pretty great.

Trying Too Hard or Not Trying Hard Enough

In a comment to Domey's post yesterday, McKenzie McCann talked about how much she dislikes it when seemingly every story element is symbolic. A coffee pot, as McKenzie said, is never just a coffee pot. I answered something like, "I'd rather an author tried too hard than didn't try hard enough." That was yesterday.

Today I am not so sure. Since writing my reply to McKenzie, I have read the first chapter of Paula McLain's The Paris Wife and the first couple of chapters of Louis de Bernieres' Birds Without Wings. I'm going to read the Bernieres book and I might read the McLain book, but both of these novels begin with a lot lot lot of the author displaying their research. The Paris Wife is a fictional first-person account of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage as told by the wife, Hadley Richardson. The first chapter is essentially an essay about Hemingway. His eyes, his hair, his dancing, his every nickname, etc etc etc and I just wanted to shake Ms McLain by the collar and tell her "I get it; this is about Ernest Hemingway." The trouble is, the scene was allegedly about Hadley Richardson dancing for the first time with Hemingway at a party, and there was almost no Hadley Richardson in there. It was all McLain's researched details about Hemingway. Ms McLain is trying too hard.

Birds Without Wings is a tragic love story set in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, as it is becoming Turkey. Nationalism, racism, the Gallipoli campaign during WW I and love all intertwine in the novel, all with tragic consequences. Sounds nifty. Except, the first few thousand words are all set dressing. It's nice to know that an imam is one who leads prayers and that a hodji is someone who's been on the haj and that people in Turkey spoke Turkish but wrote using Greek script and that Christian and Muslim traditions were mashed up in rural areas, but after a while I just wanted to meet some characters and see some action. I'm in a history lesson right now. Mr de Bernieres is trying too hard.

This reminds me of when Mighty Reader read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Every time Princess Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya ("Kitty") comes into the story, Tolstoy must describe the beauty of Kitty's clothing and person. Mighty Reader was more than once heard to exclaim, "Okay, Leo, we get it. Kitty's pretty and dresses well. Is that all you've got to say about her?" I said to Mighty Reader, "Well, the book is like 6,000 pages long. Don't you need to be reminded about the characters?" Mighty Reader looked at me like I'd grown soft in the head.

This is something I wonder about in my own books, which so far have tended to be set in the historical past. How much do I tell my reader about the setting? Where do you draw the line between giving enough explanation so that the story makes sense and the story just being a textbook? I'm not one of those people who read historical fiction in order to learn about the past. I just like a good story told well. I also don't think that writers owe any fidelity to the past and I've read enough interviews with writers of historical fiction to be aware that they'll serve the story at the expense of the facts and I'm fine with that. So I don't need to hear how the horsemen of Mongolia were more fierce than were the horsemen of Kurdistan or whatever, especially when that's just filler in the middle of a paragraph. At some point, the story gets lost for me and I'm just wading through the writer's notes.

This is not an argument against detail, though. Proust goes into minutia for half a million words but that's just the way his mind works in the pursuit of his themes. He's not trying to show you how well he's observed his hotel suite or the shoes worn at the artistocratic parties he attends. His work is about the details and it's pretty fine stuff.

Anyway, I realize that this is all very much down to personal taste and individual reading history, but I don't think that's any reason not to discuss it. How much do you want/need to be told about setting/history (real or made up by the author) before you're willing to lose yourself in a story? What are your minimum requirements? How close to the beginning of the story do you want this stuff to appear? (Last night I was talking about backstory with Mighty Reader, re my current novel. She asked if I was going to give my MC's Big Personal Question in the first chapter or so. "What?" I said. "And leave nothing for Act Two?")

You Guessed Wrong

I remember it clearly. My mom had made cinnamon suckers - Christmas tree shapes, teddy bears, and reindeer. I was probably eating way too many of them. Snuggled up in the armchair with a blanket and a copy of Jane Eyre, I had my first experience with truly understanding symbolism. Maybe it was a little late - my Senior year in high school - but for some reason I remember this experience so vividly it is always what I go back to when I think of great literary symbols.

This is purely from memory, and since I haven't read Jane Eyre again for several years now, you'll forgive me for wrong details. There was a chestnut tree. Lightning split it in two at some point in the story, soon after Jane and Rochester's engagement. Not a good sign, right? I remember a scene with Jane or Rochester looking at that tree split in two, and like a hammer smashing over my head, I thought, "Oh! I get it now!!!!" I think I choked on a piece of cinnamon sucker because it was such a powerful symbol, so beautifully done and well-crafted. I wanted to write something like that one day.

Imagine my surprise when my English teacher told me I as WRONG about the symbol, that it didn't represent both Jane and Rochester's impending doom, but only Rochester. He even compares himself to the tree at one point, and that proved the author's intention of the symbol.

Bull crap!

Of course, I believed my teacher at the time, but I sure don't now. It drives me nuts when readers try to insist that an author meant only one thing in their writing. The beauty of symbolism is that it can have multiple meanings and layers depending on the reader. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had an English teacher try to insist on one meaning for something, am I? Is this why so many students have such a bad literary experience as teens? Is this why literary fiction gets a bad rap?

I used to view literary fiction as a box filled with puzzle pieces. And even worse, if you don't particularly enjoy puzzles, some of them don't fit together properly where they should. Now I'm with Scott when he says:

I embrace the slovenly, drunken and reeling thing that is the novel.

What a beautiful way to look at it instead of some stiff, uppity being that will slap your hands if you guess wrong. I guess my point is today that if you're turned off by literary fiction - I'm speaking mostly of classic literature here - give it another try. There are no right answers. In fact, there doesn't even have to be answers. The best part of Jane Eyre for me wasn't the symbol of the chestnut tree - it was reading that book and then reading The Wide Sargasso Sea to get Rochester's viewpoint of the story. That was fun.

Gourmet Gummies

Yesterday we had an agent visit this blog. She left an excellent comment concerning the difference between commercial and literary fiction. Thank you, Eva! Her explanation of literary fiction blew me away because it is, perhaps, the first time someone has explained literary fiction in terms that make complete sense to me.

Literary fiction . . . happens between the lines. The plotting may be as tricky as any thriller novel and the pace may be fast or slow, but what distinguishes literary fiction is what is left unsaid. Narrators may be self-absorbed or unreliable, things are pointed to without being explained. These are the novels that make you re-read every third paragraph because of they way it makes you think -- then you re-read the entire book and discover new things therein.

It seems like literary should be easier to write, huh? Just leave a lot of stuff unsaid! Not so. What is left unsaid is obviously the key. The gourmet gummies, I like to say.

I was riding in the car with my dad one morning. He had a package of gummy candy between our seats. On the back it said something along the lines of: "Gourmet Gummies! We choose the finest ingredients and craft our candy for the ultimate gummy experience." Sounds great! And they were good. Really good. Like discovering a treasure.

The ironic thing about this ride with my dad was that we talked about literature that day. My dad made it absolutely clear that he'd rather not read something if he feels like he has to go back and reread things, or even worse, read the book again just to understand everything about it! I made it absolutely clear that I thought a good literary piece of fiction could entertain and offer more to chew on in a second read.

I used to think the gourmet gummies I loved in literary fiction were: symbols, deep and meaningful subjects/characters, and layers of meaning. These are parts of literary fiction - and any fiction - that get me excited. But what it seems I really love is what is not there. The interpretive part of the genre. What is not spelled out. What is built into the story without being built into the story. Tricky. Tasty. Like fine ingredients crafted for the ultimate reading experience.

Questions For The Day: Do you try and craft gourmet gummies into your fiction, or do you avoid the whole "literary" aspect of writing? Do you feel like this "going unsaid" theory needs to be done consciously in literary fiction, or do you think I'm high on sugar?


~MDA (aka Glam)

Symbols and Stories

I think a lot of writers are automatically put off by the word symbolism. It's an idea a lot of people misunderstand, and to discuss the symbolism in a novel is--to some people--tantamount to announcing that the novel is difficult and likely very dull. "Oh, it's got metaphors," people groan. So I'm going to discuss symbols and symbolism and attempt to demystify this subject. I want to talk more about symbols in stories in the future, so this post is sort of an introduction to terms and general ideas.

A symbol is something that stands for something else. A stop sign is a symbol to drivers that they have to hit the brakes. A red cross is a symbol for a hospital. The color white means purity in some countries, mourning in others, death in yet others. In some cultures, lambs symbolize innocence. The '*' key on an adding machine means "multiplication." Et cetera. A symbol is one thing that stands in place of something else. We all use symbols, every day.

Symbols in literature fall into three types: simile, metaphor and allegory. Let's have a look at them.

Simile

A simile is a statement that compares one object to another, using the word "like." This thing is like this other thing is the basic formula.

His head is like a football is a simile. Similes are the most common form of symbolism. They are also arguably the least creative way of comparing things, because they are the most obvious and prone to cliche. His love for her was like a red rose is a cliche. Excuse me while I yawn.

Metaphor

This is the one that causes people confusion. It is essentially a simile without the word "like." The writer says that an object is another object, usually something not commonly associated with the first object:

His head is a football.
His love for her is a red, red rose.

Those are lame examples (especially the love/rose), but I've already used them so I'm sticking with them. The thing about metaphor as opposed to simile is that metaphors can be extended, stretched, to deepen the commentary about your subject:

His head was a football, hard and full of air. Real life was going to kick him into the goal on more than one occasion.
His love for her was a red, red rose, splendid for but a few days and then falling apart, petal by petal.

Metaphors can also represent things that aren't directly identified by the writer. This is where things get tricky. Suppose that you read a story in which every time a man told a certain woman that he was faithful to her, her candle would blow out. When it turns out that the man is NOT faithful to the woman, she is alone while he's off dallying elsewhere and her candle keeps going out. The flame going out becomes--through repetition in a single context--a symbol for his infidelity. This symbol is never apparent to the characters; it exists for the reader.

In my last book, the behavior of birds, singly or in flocks, mirrors the behavior of characters in the book. The condition of a garden represents the political situation (I stole that image from Shakespeare; thanks, old man!). In "The Lord of the Rings," the ring represents power which corrupts absolutely. The Ents personify nature lashing back at technology. The elven race, possibly, represents religion. Et cetera.

Allegory

Allegory is a form of story where the characters act as stand-ins for other characters. Fables are frequently allegories, with talking animals standing in for types of people. "The Ant and the Grasshopper" is an allegory. "The Tortoise and the Hare" is an allegory. Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" is a retelling of "The Myth of Sisyphus," so you could say it's an allegory of a metaphor. The play-within-the-play in "Hamlet" is an allegory.

There is a special type of allegory called a Roman a clef, which translates literally as "novel with a key." Romans a clef are allegories about real people, and the identities of those people are kept secret to avoid things like libel suits. These novels include a "key"--a clue, basically--to let clever readers "unlock" the secret and find out who the real people being discussed are. Political figures are sometimes written about via roman a clef, though nowadays it's becoming rare.

Why use symbols?

We use symbols for a variety of reasons. Similes are used primarily to describe things and people. Allegory is primarily used to teach a lesson (usually a moral one). Metaphor, the most slippery of symbols, has many uses. Metaphor can:

describe something in a poetic or lyrical way

be extended to add depth and dimension to the description

foreshadow events (in the love/roses example, if there are actual rose bushes in the story, they might catch a blight before the love story goes bad; or see the big storm in Act One of "Jane Eyre")

reinforce plot and character (the candle flame example, as well as all the references in "Hamlet" to poison and ears throughout the play)

bring out theme (in "The Overcoat," Gogol uses Akaky's overcoat to symbolize his place in society, and the treatment of his overcoat parallels the treatment Akaky receives).

All of this deepens the story, adding layers of meaning and understanding for the reader, even if the reader doesn't notice the symbolism (and maybe it's better if it's all subliminal anyway). Character, plot and theme can all be reinforced in subtle ways, so you aren't beating the reader over the head through repetition of dialog or events.

Symbolism is sort of a magic trick that allows you to tell the story in several languages at once. Don't be afraid of using it. If you make any use of symbolism (especially in a way I've neglected to mention here), tell us about it!

~SGFB