Symbols and Characters in the Novel: An Analysis

Posted on Feb 14, 2025 in Language

Characters and Symbols in the Novel

1. Novel Characters and Defining Elements

Each generation features distinct characters. Marriages, family relationships, and individual fates create the framework for the narrative. Once characters fulfill their function, they no longer have a narrative reason to exist. Their disappearance is a natural death; youth, maturity, and death form an inevitable cycle.

Teresa Goday

Teresa Goday casts a shadow and links all the characters across several generations of the house.

  • A woman, mother, and grandmother.
  • The axis of time, the creator, and the recorder of the family.
  • Her death marks the onset of decomposition.
  • She provides narrative links.

2. Objects and Symbols: Classification and Meaning

Objects serve as records due to their evocative power, clearly demonstrating the passage of time and erosion.

Symbolism of Objects

A) Objects Representing Characters:

  • Japanese Cabinet: Nicholas Rovira
  • Flesh-colored Roses: Teresa
  • Wooden Boat: James
  • Silver Bracelet: Maria
  • Violets: Barbara

B) Objects Loaded with Meaning and Modification:

  • The Color Blue: Represents Teresa’s past working in the fish market and her social ascent.
  • Pearl Gray: Associated with jeweler Drink, Salvador, and Amadeus, symbolizing infidelity or the search for unachieved love.
  • Nacre Fan with Apple: Eulàlia gives it to Teresa during a moment of splendor, later related to Teresa’s decline.
  • The Lilac Domino: Represents Teresa’s time of splendor, and its reappearance signifies her decline.
  • Pink and Green Glass: A game Salvador brought from Vienna.
  • Turkeys: Represent cries of passion, referring to the fullness of love.

C) Metonymy of Objects:

  • The Garden and the Tower: Represent part of Valldaura’s history, symbolizing absolute reality (their own world).
  • Dollhouse: Represents the tower and its world, the world where the adults play.
Dollhouse Figures:
  • Lady with a collar and topped by a bright star: Sofia
  • Man with a mustache: Lacks a glance, representing Eladi (corpse with a half-open eye).

Ramon left home when the man with the mustache was decapitated (symbolizing anger toward his father).

Objects = Spherical image of the world

  • The Mind: Associated with amorous passion.
  • Golden Ball: Represents the world, no larger than an orange, feeding her dream with a sweet, acidic material.
  • Apple: Represents a desired paradise. Teresa will flower in their hands (Dream) harmonious world, rain of flowers on the estate of Valldaura. The fruit, paradise happiness that will always present when you open the fan (the last hope of recovery) that gave him Eulàlia night of dancing.
  • The Acorn’s Umbrella: Pearl gray, representing the notary’s world, a more pragmatic vision of existence that will also fall apart like the pearl handle.
  • Hazelnut: For Eladi, the world is like a hazelnut: a hard shell with little substance inside. He lacked personality.
  • Glass Bubble: A glass house Pilar Segura gives Eladi years later. Represents PS’s world, which she wants to bring Eladi into.

D) Singular Objects:

  • The Rat: The rat’s presence in the house and garden shows the effects of time and death. The house remains for the rat, but not for us, because we have lived that life.
  • Ivy: Represents time and death, invading everything.
  • Flames: Like ivy, flames represent destruction and transformation, linked to fire that kills, destroys, and grows through memory.
  • The Laurel: Associated with immortality, referencing the myth of Apollo and Daphne. When lightning strikes the bay laurel, Maria dies, but her spirit does not disappear.
  • Water: Represents death, destruction, and the passage of time. Water as a tradition (living or dead or stagnant river).
  • Mirror: An important element for symbolists, reflecting the road of death over time. Two characters are correlated: Barbara, who does not resist and commits suicide (by means of the mirror), and Armanda, who turns it upside down (there’s the devil).

A significant element in the realistic novel is a mirror that strolls along a path, one broken mirror reflecting life (fragments) and the dead (the image of a skull handle).

The mirror is broken because it has no function; characters have seen themselves young and old, and have witnessed their decrepitude.