Symbols in Summer Reading

There were a few symbols in the summer reading that particularly stood out to me.

In Grapes of Wrath there were many symbols. Specifically, the birth of the stillborn child at the end of the movie seemed to me to be a general symbol of all of the suffering and pain that the Joad family had to endure, and it also stood for all the other families who had their own suffering to deal with. There were many Godly symbols in the novel as well such as the ending scene in which Rose of Sharon symbolizes the Virgin Mary caring for the dead Jesus. Also, the flooding in the final chapter reminded me of the flood that occurred with Noah and the Ark in the Old Testament of the Bible.

In Cather in the Rye I observed just in general that the main character stood for the teenager's struggle to find his place in the world. His story contained many of the problems that kids of every shape and size face on a daily basis trying to figure out what their role in the world is supposed to be.

In Old Man and the Sea I did not at first see a lot of symbols. Obviously I saw the reeling in of the big fish as a symbol of perseverance in the face of hardship and never giving up no matter what. After discussing in class how the old man was meant to represent Jesus, everything really started clicking in my head. In the way the old man is constantly struggling with the huge weight of reeling in that large fish that constantly is fighting against him, I saw the way Jesus is constantly struggling to bring the people that he loves to him as they constantly try to push him away. Also in the way the sharks came and bit chunks out of the side of the fish he worked so hard to real in I saw how different things and distraction in the world takes away groups of the people he is trying to real in, or you could also read it as the fish being one individual soul he is trying to save and the sharks are the distractions that are constantly pulling parts of you into different directions.