Imagery and Symbolism: Imagery and symbolism are two literary conventions used in a variety of genres including poetry. They are both used in similar ways to enhance an author’s message or theme. Imagery is a technique that uses strong sensory words to create a vivid mental picture for the reader, so that he or she can see something as the author sees it. It is related to the five Senses, sigh , sound ,smell and touch .
Symbolism, on the other hand, is the use of a concrete object to stand for a concept, idea, or situation. Symbolism is something that represents something else. Many authors use imagery and symbolism together to enhance the overall theme of a literary work, but they can also be used separately.
Imagery & Symbolism in A portrait of Artist as a Young Man:
Imagery and symbolism play an important role in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It is a significant fact about the novel that many of the chief images are suggested, right at the beginning of the novel. Some important images are that of the cow, the rose, the woman, birds, and water. At the start of the novel we also made aware of the way his father looks (sight), the songs that sung to him and the clapping of uncle Charles and Dante (sound), the feeling when he wets the bed (touch), and the reward of a “cachou” (cashew-taste).All these represents the imagery in the novel .Most of the times these images have a symbolic function also. Some of the characters are also symbolic. The major images in the novel embody Stephan’s experience, preparing us for realization which could not occur without them.
1. Title:
The obvious theme of The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man is hinted in the title-the depiction of the emergence of a young man as an artist. The word portrait is also symbolic in a sense that it is used for the novels in which there is a character sketch of writer’s personality. There are many autobiographical