What Do Caves Symbolize?
"If we want to figure out what a symbol might mean, we have to use a variety of tools on it: questions, experience, preexisting knowledge," states Foster, on page 100.
I found it interesting how Foster brings up the point that symbols do not always mean the same thing for every person. Judging from Foster's description of A Passage to India, the author of that work did not want the reader to have a clear cut view of what was going on in the cave. Sometimes an author wants certain things to leave us pondering, maybe just to keep the work on our minds as we ravage through different ideas, as days and weeks pass. If something can get under the skin of a reader so much that it keeps the work on our minds for a long time, then maybe the author really accomplished something. Now I'm not saying that is the only reason why A Passage to India was written the way it was, but it is definately something to consider. If some symbols can mean different things to every individual, then maybe a clever author inserts such symbols so that the reader is left guessing. Or maybe a work is created for the specific purpose of engaging individual readers, so they will make a special connection, whatever that connection may be, to a work and thus have a special fondness or appreciation of an idea and what it may symbolize to them.
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/EL267/2009/02/foster_how_to_read_literature_2/#comments
I found it interesting how Foster brings up the point that symbols do not always mean the same thing for every person. Judging from Foster's description of A Passage to India, the author of that work did not want the reader to have a clear cut view of what was going on in the cave. Sometimes an author wants certain things to leave us pondering, maybe just to keep the work on our minds as we ravage through different ideas, as days and weeks pass. If something can get under the skin of a reader so much that it keeps the work on our minds for a long time, then maybe the author really accomplished something. Now I'm not saying that is the only reason why A Passage to India was written the way it was, but it is definately something to consider. If some symbols can mean different things to every individual, then maybe a clever author inserts such symbols so that the reader is left guessing. Or maybe a work is created for the specific purpose of engaging individual readers, so they will make a special connection, whatever that connection may be, to a work and thus have a special fondness or appreciation of an idea and what it may symbolize to them.
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/EL267/2009/02/foster_how_to_read_literature_2/#comments
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