Sounding Brass and Clanking Symbols

To a lot of readers, literary symbolism is that thing in high school English class that the teacher went on and on about instead of talking about the story.  Then some of them turn into writers, and come to the understanding that literary symbolism isn’t some sort of academic game of  “Gotcha!” – it’s just another tool in the toolbox, a way of deepening and enriching the theme of the story without having to take the reader’s attention away from the plot and the setting and the characters.

Sometimes the gun over the mantelpiece literally goes off in the third act.  And sometimes the gun over the mantelpiece is there to keep the reader aware of something else in the story that goes off in the third act instead.  That second gun is a symbol.

There are two sorts of symbols.  One sort consists of symbols drawn from several…