From the book, “How To Read Literature Like a Professor” (Thomas C. Foster).
“Is that a symbol. Sure it is. That’s one of the most common questions in class, and that’s the answer I usually give. Is that a symbol? Sure, why not. It’s the next question where things get hairy: what does it mean, what does it stand for?”
From “Ernest Hemingway on Writing”. “There isn’t any symbolysm (sic). The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. There sharks are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is sh*t. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.”
From Maria Popova, Symbolism Survey “at its best, symbolism, like salt, is invisible and seamless; it’s organic rather than engineered; and it is, above all, the product of your own mind rather than a prescriptive recipe.”
You Decide. For me it seems like symbolism is a product of our own experiences and imagination, helping us to extract a personal meaning from the writing.