Intellectual treat or not, the significance of all that blood was hard to miss once I started reading over my beer- and tea-spattered first-draft manuscript [of Carrie]. So I started to play with the idea, image, and emotional connotations of blood, trying to think of as many associations as I could. There were lots, most of them pretty heavy. Blood is strongly linked to the idea of sacrifice; for young women it’s associated with reaching physical maturity and the ability to bear children; in the Christian religion (plenty of others, as well), it’s symbolic of both sin and salvation. Finally, it is associated wuth the handing down of family traits and talents. We are said to look like this or behave like that because “it’s in our blood.” We know this isn’t very scientific, that those things are really in our genes and DNA patterns, but we use the one to summarize the other.
It is that ability to summarize and encapsulate that makes symbolism so interesting, useful, and—when used well—arresting. You could argue that it’s really just another kind of figurative language.
Does that make it necessary to the success of your story or novel? Indeed not, and it can actually hurt, especially if you get carried away. Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create a sense of artificial profundity. None of the bells and whistles are about story, all right? Only story is about story. …
Symbolism (and the other adornments too) does serve a useful purpose, though—it’s more than just chrome on the grille. It can serve as a focusing device for both you and your reader, helping to create a more unified and pleasing work. I think that, when you read your manuscript over (and when you talk it over), you’ll see symbolism, or the potential for it, exists. If it doesn’t, leave well enough alone. If it does, however—if it’s clearly a part of the fossil you’re working to unearth—go for it. Enhance it. You’re a monkey if you don’t.
Transcribed by me from pages 199–200 of my mass market paperback of On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft © 2000, Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster.
Tweet: Stephen King discusses the symbolism in his novel Carrie.
Tweet: “It is that ability to summarize & encapsulate that makes symbolism so interesting.”
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Guess I’m a monkey; I don’t use symbolism. It adds depth, but it’s a depth that is far too often a distraction from the intended arc.
Someone might look at my life, for instance, and see symbolism in my involvement with aeroplanes, to the point of building a set of wings in my living room. Flying might symbolize escape, freedom, love of cloudscapes, a desire to ‘put out my hand and touch the face of God…”.
All undoubtedly true on some level, but someone reading this into ‘my’ story, and them meeting me, would be disappointed to see that I’m not a highly spiritual freedom-seeking aesthete…I like building things, and I like the challenge of flying difficult aeroplanes, and I like looking down from a height the position of which I can control.
To each his own! Thanks for reading!