The Futility of Subtlety and Symbolism in Modern Literature

Recent feedback on a couple of stories showed this loud and clear

Ever feel as a writer that you are tossing pearls before swine? You’re not alone. Any of you out there who incorporate references to myths, legends, mythologies (Greek, Roman, Norse, etc.), and the various and sundry religions to which portions of the human population adhere will know the feeling well. But even without such references, your attempts to slip in hints of things to come or ending with a horrifying idea instead of deed can be totally lost on today’s readers.

“Why?” you ask.

Good question.

The Social Media Effect

Subtlety takes time to write and for the reader to get. Sometimes two or three readings are needed. But readers have been trained to read quickly once or just scan and move on. It’s the social media effect.

We live in an age when 180-character tweets (or “exes” or whatever they’re called these days, thanks to that lame re-branding of Twitter) seem to dominate our consciousness. As writers, we are now dealing with potential readers with attention spans shorter sometimes than it takes to read even that much.

On social media sites like Facebook, MeWe, LinkedIn, and of course Substack, short and sweet seems to be the order of the day. Part of this is because the writers know that readers pass over longer items or only scan them. Part is because the writers themselves are limited in their time. Not all of us have the luxury of spending all day writing. Many of you work part- or full-time jobs or are otherwise occupied. Understandable. Your time is limited, so slowing down to really read something is difficult.

It’s essential, though, to fully enjoy what you’re reading.

Slowing Down to Catch the Details

When you’re a passenger on a speeding train or in a car zooming along a highway, the scenery going by is there for a brief moment and then gone. If your attention strays for as short a span of time as a few seconds, you can miss something. And that something could be of the utmost importance in making sense of that scene.

So it goes with literature.

In two short stories I submitted recently to a contest (and waited three months to hear the results of the judging), there are subtleties and details that the judge very obviously missed based on the feedback. The judge thought the first story was three stories combined, totally missing what the opening scene was, the symbolism in it, and how it related to the rest of the story. The idea permeates of our fears being made manifest, sort of like in The Forbidden Planet where the Krell destroyed themselves that way. But it was a pearl tossed out and trampled. Sad.

The judge not only thought the second story was also three stories combined, but also asked questions that were answered in the story. I shudder at how this person would react to my longer works which have more complexity and subtlety—and yes, symbolism—in them. I also shudder at this person judging any such contest.

Not the first time it’s happened, though. In fact, a story in a contest that won a prize is constantly misinterpreted. The ending is seen as positive but is in reality quite horrifying, just not in an overt, slasher manner. The subtlety of a woman so intent on correcting the mistakes of her past by taking over the body of a younger woman and then vowing to seek out her past love, doubtless with disastrous results for them both, for some reason is seen as positive by many readers.

Which brings me to another factor in all this.

The Reader’s Psychology

Getting back to the references named above, I have to say a lot of this loss of reader understanding our subtleties and symbolism is due to our education system. Few are taught about Greek and Roman mythology these days. Fewer read the original versions of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, and others. And even the most stalwartly religious hardly recognize references to that religion in fiction, or worse yet they react negatively, as a recent article by one author recently showed.

And that leads to this question:

What Do We Writers Do?

The choice seems to be between continuing to include such subtleties and symbolism and leave it to the reader to work things out or to hammer the reader over the head in a manner totally devoid of anything less than the most blunt manner and ideas.

I choose to write as I have and hope that others will understand. As for that contest judge, the pity is that he/she didn’t take time to give my stories their proper due. I hope others will.

And I hope you will find the readers your work deserves.

Final Note

Hope you found this helpful and have been inspired to start and/or continue writing!

See my article: Publisher Agent Fiction Genres Defined, with downloadable PDF.

Please check out my works in progress (WIPs). And thanks for reading.

NOTE: None of my text or images are AI-generated. You can rest assured that I pulled it all out of that stuff in my skull called a “brain.”

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