Symbol metaphor and theme
Winterdance is the story of an ordinary man who is in love with sled riding his dogs. When he decides to run the iditarod “ the impossible race ” he lacks the idea owhat he’s in for. paulsen intertwines things such as themes in the book to keep the book alive.
A theme is the main idea in a story, book, or poem that is universal and applicable to all people. In winterdance the theme is perseverance through passion in the face of insanity. an example from the book that shows the theme is “she left me before I could tell her that I thought my whole life had changed that my basic understanding of values had changed, that I was not sure I would ever recover, that I had seen god and he was a dog man and that nothing, ever, would be the same for me again.” paulsen uses symbols to show the theme throughout the book.…show more content… A symbol in winterdance is the beaver, the beaver represents bravery.
The beaver represents bravery because it stands up when the dogs start chasing it.
Another big symbol in the book is the dogs, the dogs show transformation. They show paulsen's transformation into a more dog like man, and they show transformation in the dogs relationships with paulsen and with each other. A quote in the book that represents this is “ I have camped with the dogs many times now, and they have come to see it as a way of life. ” Another way paulsen keeps the book alive is with metaphors or sayings.
A metaphor is a figure of speech where a word, thing ,or a phrase is applied to an object or an action to which it is not actually applicable. A metaphor from the book is “ A man with a toothache cannot be in love.” From this information we can infer that throughout the book there was an important connection with the dogs, we also can see that the iditarod was a life changing experience for
