The Life And Times Of Homer Simpson

The Life And Times Of Homer Simpson

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/symbols.htm
Birds:
Birds are major symbolic images in the narrative. They symbolize the ability to communicate (the mockingbird and parrot) and entrapment of women (the two birds in cages; the desire for flight; the pigeon house). Flight is another symbol associated with birds, and acts as a stand in for awakening. The ability to spread your wings and fly is a symbolic theme that occurs often in the novel. Edna escapes her home, her husband, her life, by leaving for the pigeon house. Mlle. Reisz lectures Edna on the need for strong wings in artistic endeavors.

Learning to swim:
Edna has struggled all summer to learn to swim. She has been coached by the men, women, and children on Grand Isle. In chapter ten, Chopin uses the concept of learning to swim as a symbol of empowerment. It provides Edna with strength and joy. Also attached to the concept of swimming are the ideas of staying afloat and getting in over one's head. Edna manages to do both.
The moon
The moon has many symbolic meanings in The Awakening. It is used as a symbol of mythic power and connects Edna with the goddess Selene and the associated implications. She is strong and commanding, the goddess of the hunt. She is sexually aware of Robert for the first time, the fertility aspect of Artemis. Moonlight also symbolizes the struggle Edna has with the concepts of sexual love and romantic love. At the end of chapter ten, delicate images of "strips of moonlight," are interposed with strong sexual feelings, "the first-felt throbbings of desire." Joyce Dyer suggests that this juxtaposition "symbolically anticipates the problems Edna will have determining the relationship between sex and romance" (58).Go back and reread chapter 10.
Ocean, Gulf, or Sea:
The ocean is a symbol of both freedom and escape. Edna remembers the Kentucky fields of her childhood as an ocean, she learns to swim in the gulf, and she finally escapes into the sea. The ocean is also a source of...