Litereary elements Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Litereary elements - Essay Example Symbolism enables the author to replace some of these abstract ideas and thoughts with a concrete image or object, reducing the space needed to express them while still conveying the deeper elements. In The Literary Symbol by William York Tindall, symbol is defined as â€Å"the outward sign of an inward state† where ‘sign’ indicates a material object and ‘inward state’ refers to feelings, thoughts or a combination of the two (1955). Whether it is actually referred to as such or not, symbolism often provides a story, poem or play with an added element of meaning and depth that would be difficult to accomplish in any other way. To help illustrate how this is done, the use of symbolism in the short story â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† by Edgar Allen Poe, the poem â€Å"Sailing to Byzantium† by William Butler Yeats and the play â€Å"Fences† by August Wilson will be analyzed. Edgar Allen Poe has often been considered the master of the short story. He employs two primary objects in â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† to symbolize the cause of his narrator’s madness. The old man’s eye is the first of these symbols to appear within the text of the story. As the narrator attempts to explain why he felt led to murder, he continues to blame his actions on the old man’s eye. Basic medical knowledge today quickly identifies this condition as symptoms of a cataract, a film that gradually creeps over the eye of an elderly person, changing the color of the eye to a pale bluish color. It is this encroachment that seems to so bother the narrator because it symbolizes the idea of the evil eye. This ancient idea holds that the holder of the evil eye has the power to harm people or possessions just by looking at them. The presence of the evil eye, thus the evidence of the existence of evil, in the loved old man is the catalyst that leads to the narrat or’s madness. The other major symbol