Symbolism

Symbolism

Symbolism is the use of a concrete object to represent an abstract idea. It is a figure of speech that is used when an author wants to create a certain mood or emotion in a work of literature. Symbolism is in colors, nature and poetry. To comprehend more about color symbolism it is important to know that it can vary on culture and circumstances. Each color has impact on people, energy is expressed depending on the color. The following chart demonstrates colors and its meaning.
 

An excellent and clear example of symbolism in poetry is on "Still I Rise" poem from Maya Angelou. It contains metaphors, similes, hyperboles, imagery and repetition.

Below, a brief summary about Maya Angelou's biography


Poet, Author, Civil Rights Activist (1928–2014)

Early Years

• Multi-talented barely seems to cover the depth and breadth of Maya Angelou's accomplishments. She was an author, actress, screenwriter, dancer and poet. Born Marguerite Annie Johnson, Angelou had a difficult childhood. 
• As an African American, Angelou experienced firsthand racial prejudices and discrimination in Arkansas. She also suffered at the hands of a family associate around the age of 7: During a visit with her mother, Angelou was raped by her mother's boyfriend.

The following are some examples of symbolism:

Imagery

Does my sassiness upset

you?

Why are you beset with

gloom?

'Cause I walk like I've got

oil wells

Pumping in my living room

  
(Oil wells are very valuable = rich)

   (Represents confidence the poet has in herself)

  Hyperbole

  You may shoot me with your

 words,

   You may cut me with your

  eyes,

   You may kill me with your

    hatefulness,

  But still, like air, I'll rise.

(The poet mentioned shooting, cutting and killing and related to words, eyes and hatefulness)

 Metaphor

 I'm a black ocean,

 leaping and wide,

 Welling and swelling I

 bear in the tide

 The poet is comparing "me" and the "black ocean"

 Opinion

Firstly, is important to know how to analize figures of speech, such as this poem. FOS provides a meaning to the poem in all verses; it also allows reader to be more interested when FOS represent ideas. 

Also, "Still I Rise" poem clearly addressed to the white oppressors of black persons, the poem presents us with a black woman willing to speak up for herself, for other living blacks, and even for her black ancestors. The poem is both highly political and highly personal. The speaker is implicitly responding to decades and even centuries of oppression and mistreatment. Her tone, then, never sounds arrogant or cocky. Instead, most readers are likely to feel immense sympathy with her spirited rejection of further oppression.