Symbolism Examples in Short Stories: 7 Objects That Carry Meaning
Quick answer: Symbolism examples from The Yellow Wallpaper, Araby, The Dead, The Masque of the Red Death and more: how a concrete object comes to stand for something larger.
Symbolism is the use of a concrete thing, an object, a place, a colour, a weather, to carry a meaning the story never states outright. The object stays itself on the page. A window is still a window. But because of where it appears and what happens near it, it begins to stand for something the character cannot say. Good symbols are found in the story's own furniture, not imported from a dictionary of meanings.
Seven symbols found in the furniture
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman builds its entire meaning out of a pattern on a wall. The narrator, confined to a nursery for a rest cure, first hates the paper, then studies it, then sees a woman behind its bars trying to get out. The wallpaper never stops being wallpaper. It also becomes the marriage, the treatment and the mind.
The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin places Louise Mallard in an armchair facing an open window. Through it come spring air, birdsong, patches of blue sky. Chopin never says the window is freedom; she lets Louise breathe through it, and then has the front door open instead.
Araby by James Joyce sends a boy to a Dublin bazaar he has imagined as an Eastern romance. He arrives as it is closing, hears shop assistants flirting over a till, and buys nothing. The bazaar's darkening hall stands for every illusion he brought to it.
The Dead by James Joyce closes on snow falling across Ireland, on the living and on Michael Furey's grave. The snow has been mentioned all evening as weather. In the last paragraph it becomes mortality, memory and a kind of mercy at once.
The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe gives Prince Prospero seven rooms in colours running from blue to black, and an ebony clock whose chime stops the music every hour. The rooms are a life; the clock is the thing nobody at the party wants to hear.
The Minister's Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne hangs a piece of black crape over a clergyman's face and never explains it. The congregation supplies meanings: secret sin, mourning, madness. Hawthorne's point is that the veil symbolises whatever each viewer is hiding.
Idgah by Premchand ends with a small boy spending his festival money on a pair of iron tongs for his grandmother, who burns her fingers cooking. The tongs are an ordinary kitchen tool. In the boy's hands they become love with a use.
How to use it in your own story
A symbol is earned through repetition and placement. Introduce the object as a plain object, return to it at a moment of pressure, and let the final appearance change its weight.
Common mistakes
The most frequent problem is the symbol that means one thing only, which turns the story into a code to be cracked and then discarded. A second is over-supply, where every object glows with significance and none can be trusted. A third is the borrowed symbol whose meaning comes from outside the story, so the reader recognises it without feeling it. Judges on the Writory story contest tend to reward a single recurring object handled quietly over a dozen announced ones, since Theme and Resonance is scored on what the story makes the reader carry away, not on what it labels.
Where readers meet it today
Modern examples worth reading for the device: Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, Katherine Mansfield's The Fly and The Doll's House, Raymond Carver's Cathedral, Alice Walker's Everyday Use.
What writers can take from this
- Pick your symbol from objects already in the draft, not from a list.
- Three appearances, each under more pressure than the last.
- Keep the object literal on every page; the meaning is the reader's to build.
- If two symbols compete, cut one.
- Reread the ending and ask what physical thing the reader is left holding.
Try it yourself
Write a 600-word story built around one household object that appears in the first, middle and last paragraphs. The object must be used for its ordinary purpose each time, and mean something different by the end.
Questions
What is an example of symbolism in a short story?
The open window in Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour. Louise Mallard sits before it taking in spring air and birdsong while she realises she is free. The window is never called a symbol; the story simply keeps her in front of it.
How do you identify symbolism in a story?
Look for a concrete object, place or weather that appears more than once, especially near turning points, and ask what has changed about it by the ending. If the object stays literal but gains weight, it is working as a symbol.
What is the difference between a symbol and a motif?
A motif is any element that recurs, such as a sound or a phrase; a symbol is an element that has come to stand for an idea. Most symbols in short stories are built by repetition, so they start as motifs.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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