Symbolism Essay for Final

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Eyal Kattan
Mrs. Anderson
5th Block
17 December 2014
The Use of Symbolism
Authors use many ways to show the reader the overall message of a book. It can be flat out obvious, or it can be hidden, and the reader has to infer the message. Sometimes the author will use a motif, or a symbol that shows up throughout the book. In the books
To Kill a
Mockingbird, The Secret Life of Bees, and The Samurai’s Garden, the authors use a symbol to show the overall message in the book. For
To Kill a Mockingbird, the mockingbird shows innocence, for
The Secret Life of Bees, the “secret life” of bees shows the necessities of life, and in
The Samurai’s Garden, the author uses the gardens to show healing and comfort. In these books, the authors the use of symbolism with characters, and motifs can help lead to an overall theme, and how the themes of each story leads to an overall message of the book. In the books,
To Kill a Mockingbird, The Secret Life of Bees, and The Samurai’s Garden, the authors use the characters to show how a character in a book can be used as a symbol, to help reveal the overall message in the book. They do that by using specific events in the characters lives to reveal a certain part of their life that helps reveal the overall message. The first way that these authors show this is in
To Kill a Mockingbird,
Harper Lee uses the character Tom
Robinson as a symbol to help reveal the overall theme. Tom is convicted for raping Mayella
Ewell. He was falsely convicted after Atticus Finch had proved him innocent. Tom was an

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innocent man, and he had never done anything wrong in his life. After Tom went to jail, he was shot and killed. This shows how Tom and innocent man, reveals the message because Tom symbolized the mockingbird because he was innocent. To kill a mockingbird is a sin. They are a harmless, innocent creature, and do not deserve to be punished. Tom portrays the mockingbird because he was an innocent young man, who had done nothing wrong, but was killed, the action of killing Tom was a sin, because he was a young innocent man. Another way this is shown is in the book
The Secret Life of Bees,
Sue Monk Kidd uses the life of a 14 year old girl, Lily to show how in order to live a safe, healthy life you need a queen, or in this case she needs a mom. It was
Lily’s birthday and all she really wanted was to know more about her mother. The night before her birthday, the terrible T­Ray made her kneel on gritz. This shows how without a “queen” or a mom, Lily’s house is in mayhem. Every wrong she does T­Ray finds a punishment for her.
T­Ray treats her poorly, eventually leading to her running away. Without the “queen” in her life just like with the hive, her life is in shambles, and she does not live a proper life, with the abuse of T­Ray. Lastly in the book
The Samurai’s Garden, the author, Gail Tsukiyama uses the power of the garden to show how it helps Sachi heal. In the book, Sachi does not control her own life, it was not her decision to contract leprosy, or for her family to ask her to commit suicide, but owning her garden, and controlling how it feels, and looks helps her make up for it. This shows how the garden giving Sachi control gives away the theme of healing in the book. The garden helps Sachi heal because it occupies her, and it gives her the feeling of control, which she doesn’t have with her life. In the books, they all use to power of characters to help reveal the overall message of the book.

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In the books,
To Kill a Mockingbird, The Secret Life of Bees, and The Samurai’s Garden, the authors in these books use the motifs in the book to show how they all help to reveal the overall message of a book. In these books, the title shows symbolism throughout the book, mockingbird, bees, and gardens are all used throughout the books as motifs in these novels. They help portray the overall message. In
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