picture books, story apps, movies, short stories
My reading of “Free Radicals” by Alice Munro (2008) is highly metaphorical. To me, this is a story about the Kubler-Ross stages of grief, and the new vulnerability older women feel when their male partner dies before them.
Read literally, though, and this is the story of one woman’s brush with a serial murdering intruder — a rare crime story from Alice Munro.
Today I make the case that the city, in storytelling, often gets the ocean treatment. The city equals the ocean.
This was first pointed out to me in The Anatomy of Story. You probably already know that mountains and cities are metaphorically linked. The ocean is a less well-known metaphor.
A more powerful natural metaphor for the city than the classic but predictable mountain is the ocean. With this metaphor, the writer usually begins on the rooftops, which are gabled so that the audience has the impression of floating on the waves. Then the story “dips” below the surface to pick up various strands, or characters, who live at different levels of this three-dimensional world and are typically unaware of the others “swimming” in this sea.
— John Truby, The Anatomy of Story
The following music clip is an excellent example of what we’re talking about. The very slow zoom makes us feel as if we are swimming through water.
https://youtu.be/lan-Pjv99Xk
Mary Poppins — who floats down from the sky. (I’m talking about the original film adaptation.) In the house next door, a ship captain stands on the roof (deck of his ‘ship’), along with his first mate. From Mary, the children learn that you can float if you love to laugh the day away. Bert and the chimney sweeps dance on the rooftops, which he calls the ‘sea of enchantment.’ With bursting energy, they prance on the waves (the gables) and defy gravity until the caption fires a shot from his cannon and the sweeps all disappear under the ocean’s surface until it is time to dance once more.
Broadchurch — the opening sequence of the pilot episode shows an eerie but cosy seaside little town, and the camera floats along the main street of this village in a smooth, floating, creepy fashion, as if a ghost. Or a fish.
Panic Room — the camera floats through the house, first along the floorboards then up and over, through objects and walls, waiting for the Jodi Foster character to discover her dangerous intruders. The story opens with the camera floating around New York City, establishing the location as Manhattan.
The trailer of Panic Room gives an idea of how the camera moves.
And here’s the ‘camera fish’ moving from a scene in the film:
But ocean as city is not all doom and gloom. The ocean is good like that — storytellers can use it to both scary and happy effect.
The city as ocean is also the key metaphor when you want to portray the city in its most positive light, as a playground where individuals can live with freedom, style, and love.
You can often pick a film using the city as ocean metaphor because film-makers often rely on the eye of the camera, with the camera gliding along gabled rooftops then dipping down below the “ocean’s surface” and into an open window.
— John Truby, Anatomy of Story
Sponge-bob Squarepants uses the ocean as a playground. So does Ponyo, in places.
Numerous picture books have taken a child’s bedroom and turned it into a night-time playground. The most famous in Australia is undoubtedly There’s A Sea In My Bedroom by Margaret Wild.
Others have done similar:
The Night-fish by Helen McCosker is another more recent one, because the child brings a piece of the ocean into the bedroom. (With disastrous consequences.)
These stories, in which the child enters the depths of the ocean, even metaphorically, are quite different to stories in which the character travels over the surface of the ocean, as in Where The Wild Things Are or Theodore Mouse Goes To Sea. Consider the ‘sea surface’ a different setting from ‘sea depths’. The sea depths are analogous to outer space in storytelling.
Artist Nicoletta Ceccoli has a series of paintings with girls interacting with fish who float through rooms.
I’ve written a separate post on Ocean Symbolism in Children’s Stories. For other symbolic archetypes in children’s literature, see this post. And for more on the country/city dichotomy, I offer you this post.
Don’t mistake the ocean for the beach, either. Consider them separate, as metaphors. (Naturally, they may be linked.)
Along with fantasy, horrors and Westerns, science fiction is one of the highly metaphorical categories of story.
Science Fiction is about human evolution on the grandest scale, literally the universal epic.
Science fiction stories often use the myth form, not only because myth is about the journey but also because myth is the story form that explores the most fundamental human distinctions. What Is Meant By Mythic Structure?
Science fiction is the biggest of all genres, as huge as the universe and beyond. That’s why it’s so notoriously difficult to write well. It has a broad, loose structure that covers vast scales of space and time.
Science fiction is the most creative genre, because you can take nothing for granted. The writer must literally create everything, including the space-time rules by which human life itself operates.
Howard Suber points out that science fiction is the modern ‘prophecy’ story, which has been popular forever.
As is true for any prophecy, one must understand not only the specifics of what is predicted but also the yearnings and fears they express.
— Suber
Ray Bradbury broadly defines science fiction as ‘the fiction of ideas’. He also thinks science fiction as a genre is not taken seriously enough.
Science fiction is the fiction of ideas. […] Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible. […] The mainstream hasn’t been paying attention to all the changes in our culture during the last fifty years. The major ideas of our time—developments in medicine, the importance of space exploration to advance our species—have been neglected. The critics are generally wrong, or they’re fifteen, twenty years late. It’s a great shame. They miss out on a lot. Why the fiction of ideas should be so neglected is beyond me. I can’t explain it, except in terms of intellectual snobbery. […] I often use the metaphor of Perseus and the head of Medusa when I speak of science fiction. Instead of looking into the face of truth, you look over your shoulder into the bronze surface of a reflecting shield. Then you reach back with your sword and cut off the head of Medusa. Science fiction pretends to look into the future but it’s really looking at a reflection of what is already in front of us. So you have a ricochet vision, a ricochet that enables you to have fun with it, instead of being self-conscious and superintellectual.
— Ray Bradbury
A typical science fiction film has a form as predictable as a Western, and is made up of elements which are as classic as the saloon brawl, the blonde schoolteacher from the East, and the gun duel on the deserted main street.
Science fiction is defined more by setting details than by other story elements.
Place
Sci Fi is often set on other planets, in outer space, or on a future version of Earth. But these settings are not limited to sci-fi. In war films, also, the setting takes place on ‘a front’ — in sci fi and Westerns it takes place on ‘a frontier’. Dramatically, these are equivalent places. At the front/frontier, the organised forces of society are weak, get in the way, or trap the hero.
Technology is a major component of the setting.
Time
Sci Fi requires an extrapolated or theoretical future science in order to fit the genre.
As long as there is science, technology and a future/alternative history, the conventions of almost any other genre may be blended, including comedy, action-adventure and mystery.
An ongoing debate in the science fiction community is about the merits of “hard” vs “soft” science fiction. And the role of gender is significant here.
Hard science fiction tends to be a boys’ club, while soft science fiction can be seen as more accommodating to female writers. There is a perceived hierarchy of merit operating in these classifications as well: “hard” sounds masculine and virile, while “soft” connotes a weaker, less potent, feminised form of the genre. This is why “hard” science fiction is more likely to be considered among the “best” science fiction, and why the “soft” science fiction that more women tend to write doesn’t often make the cut.The Digital Reader explains that SF written by women is more likely to be called fantasy:
In 2013, the judges of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Britain’s most prestigious science fiction prize, disqualified a number of submitted books on the basis that they were not “technically” science fiction. They were deemed by the judges to be fantasy – a genre that does not require the realism of science – which has twice as many female authors compared to science fiction. As Damien Walters has observed, women’s writing is “dismissed as fantasy, while the fantasies of men are granted some higher status as science fiction”.
The major distinction between fantasy and science fiction is, simply, that science fiction uses one, or a very, very few new postulates, and develops the rigidly consistent logical consequences of these limited postulates. Fantasy makes its rules as it goes along . . . The basic nature of fantasy is “The only rule is, make up a new rule any time you need one!” The basic rule of science fiction is “Set up a basic proposition—then develop its consistent, logical consequences.”
— John W. Campbell (1910–1971), American science fiction writer, editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact
Many disagree with this distinction. That was written in the 1960s and speculative fiction has come a long way since then. Obviously this explanation has implications for the gender divide described above.
Common-sense lives on the ground floor […] on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers.
— Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
See Symbolism of the Dream House for more on stairs and the places they connect.
Stairs = Ascent To Heaven
This image is from the 1986 version retold by Anne Carter, illustrated by Binette Schroeder. Beauty and the Beast has a strong Christian message for young women: Do as you’re told and you’ll wind up in Heaven. Here we see her going up the stairs into the Beast’s castle, sure that she’s about to end up dead.
Metaphors help readers see the world in a new way. Below are some hints for creating a resonant metaphor.
Every metaphor or simile is a little explosion of fiction within the larger fiction of the novel or story.
— James Wood, How Fiction Works
The metaphor is a fabricated image, without deep, true, genuine roots. It is an ephemeral expression. It is, or should be, one that is used only once, in passing. We must be careful, therefore not to give it too much thought; nor should the reader think too much about it.
— Gaston Bachelard, Poetics of Space
“Metaphors matter”, as Bernard Bailyn has reminded us, for “they shape the way we think” — all the more when they make sense in the light of actual experience.
— A. Roger Ekirch
A metaphor gives concrete substance to an impression that is difficult to express. Metaphor is related to a psychic being from which it differs. An image, on the contrary, product of absolute imagination, owes its entire being to the imagination.
— Gaston Bachelard, Poetics of Space
A mixed metaphor is defined as ‘a combination of two or more incompatible metaphors’.
Actually, there is a way in which mixed metaphor is perfectly logical, and not an aberration at all. … In contemporary parlance, what people dislike about mixed metaphor is that it tends to combine two different cliches, as in, say, “out of a sea of despair, he has pulled forth a plum.” The metaphorical aspect is actually dimmed, almost to non-existence, by the presence of two or more mixed cliches (which be definition are themselves dim or dead metaphors).
— James Wood, How Fiction Works
In other words — a mixed metaphor is fine. Cliches are bad.
Often the leap toward the counterintuitive, toward the very opposite of the thing you are seeking to compare, is the secret of powerful metaphor. […] Obviously, whenever you liken x to y, you will be drawing attention to the fact that x is really nothing like y, as well as drawing attention to the effort involved in producing such extravagances. The kind of metaphor I most delight in, however […] estranges and then instantly connects, and in doing the latter so well, hides the former. The result is a tiny shock of surprise, followed by a feeling of inevitability.
— James Wood, How Fiction Works
(I’ve heard that ‘surprise plus feeling of inevitability’ combo before, elsewhere, in describing ‘the perfect ending’ to a story. So metaphors and endings have a few things in common.)
Maurice Saxby tells us that metaphors in children’s literature need to be on the child reader’s level for them to work:
When the image or metaphor is within a child’s range of sensory, emotional, cognitive and moral experience and is expressed in linguistic terms that can be apprehended and comprehended by young readers, a book becomes classed as a children’s one.
— Maurice Saxby, Give Them Wings
Black Dog by Pamela Allen (1991) is about a girl who actually neglects her dog, but learns not to by the end.
A few weeks ago I took a close look at the much more recent picture book with a similar name, Blackdog by Levi Pinfold. In that, I interpret the black dog as agoraphobia or a similar mental illness that descends in winter.
Here is another book with a black dog, a winter setting and a mental illness metaphor, this time from 1991.
For a history of the symbolism of depression and black dogs, see here. (tl;dr: Winston Churchill made it well-known, but the symbolism goes back to medieval times.)
If you’re ever wondering who the main character of a story is ask the following question: Who undergoes the greatest character change?
After thinking carefully about who is the hero of this book — Christina or the Black Dog — I’ve come to the conclusion that the girl and the dog are two halves of the same character.
The first three pages of the story, written in the iterative, explain how happy Christina and the dog are playing together during spring, summer and autumn.
Then we have a switch to the singulative: One cold day in winter the wind blew and the trees shivered.
The personification of the trees (‘shivering’), and the image of the girl and her dog walking into the forest, shows how much the girl is part of the landscape. Christina is the winter.
Wind symbolises change. Also, the wind is blowing towards the house, which makes the trees lean in to retrieve her.
It was then Christina first thought how hungry the birds must be now the worms were deep in the ground and there were no seeds to be found.
So she goes to the cupboard and breaks a small piece of bread and scatters the crumbs on the ground, in an image that will immediately put the reader in mind of a scene out of Hansel and Gretel. The forest in Hansel and Gretel is the ultimate ur-Forest — whenever a child character enters a forest we know that danger lurks.
See: Hansel and Gretel by Neil Gaiman and Lorenzo Mattotti
Christina wants to keep feeding the birds through winter.
Using a trick from classic fairytales, Pamela Allen sticks to the rule of three: first one little bird comes to eat the crumbs; next two little birds, then a magnificent big blue bird.
Who is the opponent in this story? It’s a bit tricky to work out, but not if we start from the idea that in children’s books featuring animals, the animal and child character very often meld into one.
You could argue it’s the blue bird, who probably doesn’t even exist. This figment of Christina’s imagination causes her to obsess, and neglect her dog (and herself).
Christina is Black Dog’s opponent because she is supposed to be taking care of him.
Christina is her own worst enemy.
Depression, obsession and false hope is the overall opponent here.
After getting thinner and thinner from neglect, it is black dog who hatches the plan.
He will climb the tree and pretend to be a bird.
As is usual in children’s books in which the animal hatches (heh) the plan, we don’t actually see the plan until it’s carried out. But we do see him lying on the ground with his eyes looking up as if he’s thinking about something.
The ‘set piece’ of the book is when Black Dog leaps from high in the tree.
For more: The Symbolism of Flight in Children’s Literature.
But it is Christina who has the revelation. We see her pick him up carefully, gently, and carry him inside and lay him on her bed. She cuddles him and tells him she loves him.
We don’t see Christina’s emergence from depression, but we do see that she has now realised she must pay attention to her dog.
In other words, she must take care of herself during this dark time.
Into The Forest by Anthony Browne is story book, part ‘toy book’. Young readers learn to look at pictures and search for intertextuality, as each illustration links to a well-known fairytale. This makes the book popular for classroom use, along with the Shrek films and modern stories with fairytales as ur-texts.
Anthony Browne writes postmodern picturebooks and Into The Forest is an excellent example of intertextuality.
The relationship ‘between texts’.
No work of literature stands entirely alone. Readers bring a lot to a story, including their entire lives until that point, but also every story they’ve ever been exposed to. When an author points the reader’s attention to another text, this technique is known as ‘intertextuality’.
Continue reading “Intertextuality of Into The Forest by Anthony Browne”
Homes are an outworking of the characters who live inside. Sometimes, in fiction, the house even seems to come alive in its own right.
There exist sunny houses in which, at all seasons, it is summer, houses that are all windows.
— Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
For my notes after reading Gaston Bachelard, see Symbolism of the Dream House.
Continue reading “Homes and Symbolism In Film and Literature”
House symbolism is an interesting way of looking at a story. Most stories have a home in there somewhere.
What Would Be The Houses Of Filmmakers If They Were Based On Their Own Films
Buildings As Characters In Fiction
Some (e.g. Scherner) interpret houses in dreams as stand-ins for the human body. The windows, doors and entrances are the entrances into the body cavities. The facades are smooth or provided with balconies and projections to which to hold. In anatomy the body openings are sometimes called the body-portals.
Dwellings in fantasy don’t always look like the rectangular structure we know and love.
Bilbo’s circular house feels particularly cosy, in stark contrast to the jagged mountains in the distance.
Some of the oldest tales about miniature creatures living in oversized land come from fairytales: Thumbelina and Tom Thumb are the first that come to mind.
My method was mostly metaphorical: what if Thumbelina wasn’t actually small, she just felt small?
— Emma Donoghue, explaining how when rewriting fairytales she took tales from the oral tradition and simply considered them in metaphorical terms.
A useful term here is ‘homunculus‘, which means a very small person. The plural is homunculi. This was originally a medical term which comes from alchemy. By the nineteenth century we knew a bit more about how humans come about, so now the homunculus was a fictional character.
Continue reading “Making Use Of The Miniature In Storytelling”