Apparitions cannot be mere symbols, metaphors or projections: the characters, however warped, must experience them as hauntings, the reader on side.
Example: the Butch theme linking Rome, Cheez Whiz, RuPaul and many other items can be corrected by restricting CWS to a specific number of symbols, metaphors, allusions and pop culture references.
The general thrust of pure semiotics is a kind of linguistics-based social theory; if language shapes our thought, and our thought shapes our culture, then if we are looking for a master key to make sense of culture, it makes sense to start with the fundamental structures of language itself: signs, symbols, metaphors, narrative devices, figures of speech.
Consider these as symbols, metaphors and messages of the soul.
Another problem is that every choice a poet makes, even the choice to rule out symbol and metaphor, carries symbolic and metaphorical value.
As Rampersad notes, Ellison thought obsessively about myth, archetype, symbol, and metaphor.
One was towards idealism: dance as a sort of open symbol, a metaphor for emotion, an emanation of its music.
He seems impatient of too much self-analysis, disliking all the symbol and metaphor that has accreted to the mountain.
In the meantime, I offer the following observation not as a symbol or metaphor, simply as meteorological fact.
