הגדרה כסמל

Places can become symbolic too

• A setting may become symbolic when it is, or comes to be, associated with abstractions such as emotions, ideologies and beliefs.
• The CED names the abstractions precisely: not "ideas" in general, but emotions, ideologies and beliefs.
• So a symbolic setting stands for something a person could feel, argue for, or hold.

A station may be only a station until repeated departures turn it into a feeling.

"Is, or comes to be"

• The CED allows both routes, and they need different evidence.
• A setting that is already associated arrives with the association — you cite the association, not the text.
• A setting that comes to be built it inside this story — and that is the version you can prove line by line.

Some settings are nearly universal

• Over time, some settings have developed certain associations such that they almost universally symbolize particular concepts.
• A courtroom, a graveyard, a border, a sickroom.
• Note almost: a text can invoke the universal association in order to break it, and that break is the analysis.

Breaking the association is the interesting case

• A graveyard where nothing solemn happens is using its own association against itself.
• The reader arrives expecting one thing and receives another — and the gap is the meaning.
• So always ask what association the setting carried before the story used it.

A symbolic-setting pass

• Name the setting and the emotion, ideology or belief it is associated with.
• Decide: did it arrive with the association, or did the story build it?
• If it arrived with one, ask whether the story confirms it or breaks it.