Olivia Agius 11/30/16

During class today we looked back at chapter two of The Great Gatsby in order to discover symbols within the text. The symbols help the author comment on romanticism as well as modernism.To better understand the importance of symbols, our class discussed literal and figurative meanings. The definition of literal is language that represents a concrete idea. On the contrary, figurative is non-literal language that represents an abstract idea. Furthermore, our class dived into the idea what exactly abstract means. Abstract is something complex that can be interpreted in many ways, and is not tangible. Examples are nature, love, stress, beauty, and so on. No one can hold love in their hands, or actually hand someone their stress. These two ideas, literal and figurative, create symbolism. Symbolism is something real, or literal, that hold figurative meaning to it. We then looked around the classroom within our groups to find a symbol. My group came up with the snowman which is drawn on the whiteboard. In literal terms it is a drawing of a snowman. However, the figurative meaning is the excitement for the holiday/winter break. We then, as a class, brought the idea of symbolism to the book The Great Gatsby. We read a selected text about Tom buying Myrtle a dog, and determined what the symbolic meaning of Tom’s comment about the dog was. In my group we decided the comment symbolized the relationship between Tom and Myrtle, and how she relies on him to do stuff for her (he bought the dog for her) as well as the attitude both of them have towards their relationship. As a class, we found two things this comment could represent. One thing this symbol could represent is Tom’s apathy by how Tom dismisses the dog’s gender. Also, we said this could represent the relationship between the two characters.

To be able to better understand how literal things and figurative meanings create symbolism, last year we read Lord of the Flies. LOTF had plenty of symbols which we talked about. All of the below things which are mentioned are objects or people with a deeper meaning. They're symbols.