Open Prompt Response, October 16

2009. A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. In literary works a symbol can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Select a novel or play and, focusing on one symbol, write an essay analyzing how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters or themes of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

         There are a lot of clumsy people in this world, so a character dropping something in a story shouldn’t mean anything, it’s just something that happens in life. But when analyzing a literary work you have to realize that everything means something.  In Nella Larson’s Passing we see how simply dropping a teacup is a symbol, and thereby how it affects the work and discusses characters or themes.

         One of the main characters in Passing, Irene, is hosting a small party when she notices her world is crumbling in around her.  Her best friend, Clare, is talking to Irene’s husband Brian, when it clicks in her mind that they must be having an affair. We as the reader don’t know what it is that makes her think that, and we don’t know whether or not she’s right, but as she realizes it, she drops the teacup she’s holding.  The teacup breaks instantly as it hits the floor, and we instantly realize it must be a symbol.  The question is, what does it mean?

         The broken teacup has a few different meanings, the first one reveals things about Irene’s mental stability.  She had always trusted Brian and Clare but all of a sudden she thinks they’re having an affair.  For the rest of the novel, Irene is changing. She is more jealous and suspicious, more malicious, and her thoughts become rather scrambled. For example, at the end of the novel Irene helps expose Clare’s race to her husband (he thought she was white when she was really a fair skinned black), which she knew was the most dangerous thing that could happen to Clare.  And at the very end Clare falls, or jumps or was pushed, out of a window.  We don’t know which it is, because Irene is our narrator and her thoughts have become amazingly jumbled.

         The teacup reveals things about Carle as well as Irene.  The teacup is porcelain, and when we think of porcelain we typically get an image of white porcelain.  So the teacup also connects us to Clare because she is the only white character besides her husband.  When the teacup falls from Irene’s hand and breaks we see foreshadowing of the end.  The teacup is Clare, falling out of a window, breaking or dying. 

         When we look back at this we see that Larson didn’t leave an ambiguous ending as most people believe.  She spells out the answer to everyone’s question.  How did Clare fall?  Did Irene push her out of jealousy and spite? Did she jump, trying to finally free herself from her self-constructed prison? Or did she fall, just slip, was it all a horrible accident?  Larson tells the answer with the teacup.  It is dropped by Irene, which shows us that Clare was pushed by Irene. 

         These things show us just how important symbols are to stories. They give us the answers we are desperately seeking, and are used to show us things about characters in the novel.  So really, it’s never just a teacup.