Write On The Fringes: metaphor

For years I have been a writer, an editor and a teacher of creative writing. Now I want to share some of what I have learned along the way. Write On The Fringes is a blog about the dangers, the disappointments and the rewards of writing. It's a record of the writing of a novel, from the tantalising first inklings of an idea, through to the final draft. But above all it's an exploration of the art and the craft of writing and the nature of story, as well as a search for the essence of creativity and the complex nature of truth.

Showing posts with label metaphor. Show all posts

Monday, July 9, 2012

Seeking The Paradox Within Story

'Most fables contain at least some truth, and they often enable people to absorb ideas which the ordinary patterns of their thinking would prevent them from digesting.'

Idries Shah, The Sufis

As I have mentioned in other posts on this blog, I am fascinated by the fundamental paradox that I see within story, in that while it encourages us to conform to society, it also encourages us to become true individuals by shedding mindless conformity. And it is this aspect of story that I keep returning to, asking myself how a narrative can enable us to evolve as individuals. I believe there is an alternative knowledge structure deeply embedded within story, a structure that enables and encourages personal transformation, and that echoes thousands of years back to the first stories of the shamans and the ancient myths of indigenous peoples around the world, as well as being evident in many contemporary narratives. People write, read and listen to stories, not because they wish to escape from themselves, but because they wish to find themselves. So perhaps then, a key to self transformation is embedded within story.

The idea that stories might contain hidden meanings is not a new one, stretching back to the interpretation of early religious texts across many faiths and persisting to the current day through continued scholarly analysis of literature. These theories are also rooted in mystical knowledge associated with Sufism and other esoteric groups, some of this knowledge dating back thousands of years. The ancient Aesops Fables which are popular in the West, are an example of stories that are designed to jolt us out of the boundaries that restrict our thinking. In his book, The Sufis, Idries Shah writes that the popular and humorous Nasrudin Stories which date from around the thirteenth century, 'may be understood at any one of many depths. . . and the experiencing of each story will contribute towards the 'homecoming' of the mystic'. Perhaps then, rather than reinforcing blind acceptance of society's constructed realities, stories might use hidden meanings in order to innately question them. Idries Shah goes on to explain the use of humour in the Nasrudin tales, saying that 'humour cannot be prevented from spreading: it has a way of slipping through the patterns of thought which are imposed upon mankind by pattern and design.' While humour is not a strong element in my writing at present, I agree that it has great power, encouraging us to question and laugh at what we hold sacred or simply take for granted.

Much of our interpretation of a text relies on how we read. Joseph Campbell emphasised the importance of poetic interpretation, as compared to literal reading, warning that 'wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history or science, it is killed.' Karen Armstrong too, wrote passionately of the need to re-engage with story, using 'intuitive, mythical modes of thought' instead of the 'more pragmatic, logical spirit of scientific rationality.' When I was writing Flight, I began to wonder how I could layer the story in order to encourage different interpretations on the part of the reader. I wanted my readers to read intuitively, to find a story a that spoke to them in unexpected ways. In the end though I found myself unable to plan a novel in this way and decided instead to trust my unconscious to do this for me through the use of symbols and metaphor, as well as through the way in which the story structure formed itself around the character arc.

While it is clear that stories can and do contain hidden meanings, Campbell went further than this in his analysis of heroic myth, by suggesting that the very structure of story has a hidden meaning, that it is a metaphor for Jung's individuation process or the journey to self. Now that Flight is complete and published, and there has been time to receive reader feedback, it has become clear that the novel does act on a number of levels: as entertainment, as a psychological study and as a document of a spiritual journey, one in which readers can find themselves. I have always felt strongly that in my writing I am holding a mirror up to readers and helping them remember who they are, perhaps because this is what I seek from my own reading. However, my motives are not entirely altruistic, because first and foremost it is myself I am finding, both through the process of writing and through the mysteries of the unfolding story. It is my own past I am exploring and my own scars I am acknowledging and releasing, as I seek to uncover the treasure within me, the essence of self, by breaking down my fixed thinking patterns. Perhaps ultimately this is what stories are for.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Buried Treasure - Symbolism In Story

'Reason, science and technology pin us down to the literal fact, but symbols nourish the soul by pointing to something beyond what is known. Symbols quicken reality with meaning.'

Carl Jung

Today I buried Clown. The ceremony was poignant, though slightly incongruous. It was a finishing off, a letting go of sorts and it needed doing. You see, Clown was a stuffed toy from my childhood. He wasn't attractive; in fact he was grossly misproportioned, with an enormous torso, long thick legs and tiny arms. He was torn and filthy and his face was macabre, with an array of mismatching features and one eye missing. In short, Clown had been well loved.

For many years I had forgotten about Clown but a couple of years ago when my mother went into aged care, I went back to my childhood home to help pack it up, and there in the cupboard I found him. My mother had made this oversized stuffed toy for me; sitting up late one Christmas Eve so that Father Christmas could bring me a present, and I saw no contradiction in this, believing in my childhood way that they were working in cahoots. We weren't well off. Christmas meant treats, like chicken and tinned asparagus, pudding laced with an occasional coin and real cream, not the dreadful sort skimmed from the top of the boiled milk that we had for the rest of the year. There were few presents; undies from an Aunty, an occasional book or board game, and this particular year, Clown.

From the moment I clapped eyes on Clown, I fell in love. He became my friend and confidante, my ally, my comforter and my security. I poured into Clown all my angst and pain, the injustices I encountered, my sense of being different, of being misunderstood and unwanted. Seeing him again so many years later, I was torn between love and repulsion. I had moved on. I didn't need or want Clown anymore. He needed to go in the garbage bin but I couldn't do it, so in the end I stuffed him in my suitcase and brought him home. Since then he has been languishing in a cupboard awaiting his fate.

Today I had intended to write a post about characterisation but this episode with Clown made me think about symbolism instead. Clown symbolised a great deal for me. As an early much loved toy, he was a substitute for the absent mother. But as I said above, he was also a vessel for my unwanted emotions, an outlet that enabled me to get through difficult times. I don't know why my mother fashioned a clown for me to love rather than a teddy bear. Perhaps she wanted to help me see the funny side of life. Traditionally clowns represent a parody of kingship – irreverence, absurdity, ridicule. . . but there was nothing funny about my clown. He was sad but only because I had filled him with sadness. And while he was my protector he was also something for me to protect. Hence he deserved (and belatedly received) a better ending than the garbage bin. Symbols are both universal and individual, specific to a culture and a historical context, yet also transcending these things. They cannot be pinned down to a single meaning because they are able to be interpreted according to the cultural, historical and personal context in which they are placed. Clown meant something to me that was unique and yet in a story, a child clinging to a ragged stuffed toy tells every reader something about the character and needs of that child.

While many words are needed to express an idea, a symbol combines many ideas into a single word. As Anthony Stevens writes in his book, Ariadne's Clue: A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind, 'symbols tolerate paradox and can combine contradictory ideas; words are about one thing or another. Symbols awake intimations; words explain. Like musical compositions, symbolic forms are psychologically more athletic than words: they leap across national barriers'. In short, symbols inhabit the world of poetry. However, this doesn't limit them to poetic forms. As story tellers we can enrich and add greater depth to our work by consciously exploring the use of symbols. and as such, they are an important element in writing; one which we can use either consciously or unconsciously.

According to Stevens, 'the conjunction of sym (together) and ballein (to throw) emphasises the idea that the strange must be thrown together with the familiar to construct a bridge between the known and the unknown. . . . resulting in the experience of a new meaning.' In a sense then, symbols and metaphors are bridges to the unconscious, ways of explaining what cannot be explained, expressing what cannot be expressed. They provide us with access to essential truths, those that are felt but not measurable or possibly even visible.

My novel, Flight, is laden with symbols. Even the story itself is a symbol, or at least a metaphor for the journey to self, to an understanding and a remembering of who we are, to what Jung calls Individuation. Fern's story documents the journey from a mechanistic, conditioned life to one that is lived freely as a true individual. In the novel, the labyrinth is a strong symbol, and one that I consciously used. It has a two-fold reading. On a metaphoric level it is the story itself, the path Fern must follow in order to free herself. On a symbolic level it is the wilderness that Fern and Adam must find their way through in order to complete Fern's journey. There are other symbols in the novel, the snake, the bear, the eagle, the spiral, the cave. . . most of which I was unaware of at the time of writing. It was only later, in the editing process that I identified these elements and in understanding their meaning, was able to further develop them, adding a greater richness and depth to the story.

Symbols are not literal, they are not the language of the head, but rather of the heart. As a writer my goal is to find a synthesis between this language of the head and the heart; a synthesis that would create a more balanced means of interpreting the natural world and the human structures we have created. According to Stevens, symbolism is a language that transcends race, geography and time. It is the natural Esperanto of humanity'. This is a language that is fundamental for 'living stories' and one that is in danger of being lost in a world that tends more and more to a literal reading of story, rather than a metaphoric reading which allows for the transcending of difference and an embracing of the sacred.