When the Story is the Thing
by Elizabeth Solar
Fireworks have been discharged. Time Square’s bright, shiny ball has dropped, giving birth to a new year. With the descent of that sparkling orb comes the promise of better times as we re-set, clear the deck, and make way for the fantastic journey of the next 365 days.
We project emotions onto the ball -- or the New Year’s baby -- as we do many things that symbolically tie us to a larger part of life. For you, it may be vintage glassware, passed down through the generations, or the worn Red Sox cap that’s become a personal trademark, a symbol of your loyalty to not only a baseball team, but a place, a way of life. These items may provide insight into who you are, your values, a hint into your personal history, or even your heart.
In literature this phenomenon is called the objective correlative, a phrase coined by the American artist Washington Allston, in 1840. However, you can thank T.S. Eliot who nudged the concept into common usage about 60 years later. Keeping with the philosophy of ‘Show, not tell’, Eliot suggested the writer express emotion with ‘a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”
In other words, the objective correlative is an object, or place in the story that offers a symbolic purpose. You want to get those lofty ideas and themes on the page without sounding/appearing too ‘on the nose,’ or pedantic? Call in your trusty friend, the objective correlative.
Think Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and those shoes. She, and we desire her safe return to Kansas. Those ruby shoes hold a certain magic for us throughout the story, and reveal to Dorothy that she always held the power, the magic to find the way back to her beloved home. Take the glass unicorn in The Glass Menagerie: A symbol of Laura’s other-worldliness, uniqueness, her emotional fragility. When the unicorn’s horn breaks, our hearts shatter, too. Need we even broach the significance of the fire escape, which provides her brother William solitude and refuge from his family until he makes his final escape?
Place can serve as an objective correlative, as illustrated in The Yellow Wallpaper, in which a woman ruminates on her confinement in a Victorian bedroom, part of a ‘cure’ for her hysteria prescribed by her physician husband. (Don’t get me started.) As she traces patterns on the bedroom walls, she descends deeper into madness. Written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, this 1907 short story features a strong, feminist tone, a sense of this woman’s agency, even as she remains trapped, and yes, its function as an objective correlative. The reader feels as claustrophobic and disoriented as the protagonist with each succeeding page. If you haven’t read this yet, put it on your list.
Geography, even climate, provide a backdrop to a character’s state of mind. Tara provides both physical and emotional touchstones in Gone with the Wind. The beautiful Scarlett O’Hara transforms from flirtatious and conniving to strong, courageous and loving. Amidst the Civil war, she witnesses the decimation of her beloved South, and experiences personal suffering. While rebuilding her ravaged home, she realizes who she is, and finally acknowledges her feelings for Rhett Butler. Though Rhett may have moved on, Scarlett takes solace in her true love: ‘The Land’ and her home, Tara.
The landscape of Willa Cather’s My Antonia reflects its characters’ emotional states as it reveals unexplored new territories. Immigrants- turned- pioneers work the land in an epic look back to a friendship forged during cruel winters and technicolor springs and summers of prairie life in Nebraska. Desolate landscape mirrors a young orphan boy’s loneliness. A masterpiece by any standard, My Antonia’s enduring influence and popularity lies in Cather’s ability to bring the American West to life and treat a sense of place as character.
Objective correlatives in real life? It’s a new season on the Beltway. Think of the different emotional states swirling around the nation’s capital in the operatic discussions concerning one infamous Wall. Or lack thereof. Alas, our time grows short, so we’ll stop here.
You get the point. Show. Don’t tell. Find the heart of your story. Discover your protagonist’s desire. Find the appropriate talisman to reveal their inner thoughts, their soul. Thanks to my esteemed writing sister Lee Hoffman, I’ve learned to know and love the objective correlative, and sometimes employ it thoughtfully.
How about you?
