Is an Object Concept or Symbol in Literature That Appears Again and Again

Motif Definition

What is a motif? Here's a quick and simple definition:

A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are frequently collections of related symbols, help develop the central themes of a book or play. For instance, one of the central themes in Romeo and Juliet is that love is a paradox containing many contradictions. As function of developing this theme, Shakespeare describes the experience of dearest by pairing contradictory, opposite symbols next to each other throughout the play, such equally night and day, moon and sunday, crows and swans. All of these paired symbols autumn into a broader blueprint of "dark vs. calorie-free," and that broader design is called a motif. The motif (in this instance "darkness and light") reinforces the theme: that honey is paradox.

Some boosted key details about motifs:

• Because motifs are so effective in communicating and emphasizing the main themes of a work, they're common in political speeches as well as in literature.
• There are really two working definitions of motif: one that defines motif equally a special kind of symbol, and one that draws a greater distinction between the ii terms. Nosotros'll explore both definitions below.
• You may have heard the word "motif" used to depict repeating patterns outside the realm of literature. In music, for case, a motif is a short series of notes that repeats throughout a vocal or track. In fine art, a motif is a design or blueprint that repeats in dissimilar parts of an artwork, or in different works by the same artist. While these additional meanings of motif are useful to know, motifs in literature part differently and take a slightly more specific significant.

Motif Pronunciation

Here'southward how to pronounce motif: moh-teef

Motifs in Depth

In social club to sympathise motifs in more depth, it's helpful to have a strong grasp of a few other literary terms related to motif. Nosotros embrace each of these in depth on their own respective pages, but below is a quick overview to assist make understanding motif easier.

• A theme is an abstract and universal thought, lesson, or message explored throughout a work of literature. It'south what the writer is trying to say about life and man experience in full general, beyond the telescopic of what happens in a particular story. Motifs, while they often reinforce themes, are unlike in the sense that they are both more concrete and more specific to the work in which they appear than themes.
• A symbol is anything that represents some other thing. We encounter symbols constantly in our every day life: a red calorie-free is a symbol for stop, a dove is a symbol for peace, a heart is a symbol for love.
  • A literary symbol is often a tangible thing—an object, person, place, or action—that represents something intangible, similar a complex concept or emotion. For instance, in Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, the "two roads [diverging] in a yellow wood" are symbols for two unlike life paths. In Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven, the raven that taps on the narrator's door as he mourns his lost honey symbolizes the finality of her expiry.

Identifying Motifs

The principal themes of a work are rarely expressed directly by a writer (for instance, Shakespeare doesn't tell his audience direct "this play is about the contradictory nature of love"). Rather, writers reveal the main themes of their work indirectly, through different elements of the narrative such as plot developments and imagery. When readers recognize a pattern in the work they're reading—specifically, a design that connects some or all of the different images or plot developments that help express a particular theme in the piece of work—that overall pattern is the motif. Here's a more than concrete example:

• If a story centers effectually someone's sudden and unexplained death, one of the main themes might exist that death is ever-present. This theme might, in turn, be supported past a motif of harmless things becoming fatal: for instance, perhaps the main character develops an irrational fear of choking while drinking water, or contracting illness from a mosquito bite.

This relationship between themes, motifs, and symbols (or images) can be visualized with dissimilar symbols making up a motif, and dissimilar motifs supporting an overarching theme, like so:

Motif vs. Theme

Information technology tin can be difficult, at times, to clearly distinguish themes from the motifs that express them. Here are some of the key differences between themes and motifs:

• The motif is much more physical than the abstract theme: information technology consists of specific images and symbols that the reader can visualize.
• Motifs also tend to be specific to the work in which they announced, whereas themes appear again and again in different works by writers from dissimilar eras.
  • For example, there are thousands of works that explore the theme of love being contradictory. Merely while you may run across other books that examine the contradictory nature of love equally the theme, you're unlikely to find multiples books that employ the same motif or motifs and the same repetitive pattern of symbols to do and then.

To return to the Romeo and Juliet example, Shakespeare'south theme (that "love is contradictory") is an abstract idea that finds expression in different means throughout the story, and it's general enough that most people will be able to relate it to their own life and experiences. Past contrast, the motif of darkness and low-cal is non a purely abstract concept, and it's also non necessarily as broadly applicable to the lives of readers as a theme generally is.

Motif vs. Symbol

At that place are two competing means of thinking about the relationship between symbols and motifs:

• Some people think that a motif is only a symbol that repeats throughout a text. For instance, if Edgar Allen Poe's verse form "The Raven" were a longer work in which the raven disappears and reappears several times, these people would debate that the raven (which symbolizes death) would then exist a motif.
• Notwithstanding, others recollect that there's a bigger difference between motifs and symbols, and believe that symbols are just one building block of motifs, which are bigger, more overarching patterns that directly reinforce themes. These people would say that even if the raven were to disappear and reappear throughout "The Raven," it'due south still just a symbol.
  • These people might fence that the symbol of the raven—which taps on the narrator's door and perches above the entry way to his house, and generally acts equally a messenger from another world—is part of a larger motif in poem of thresholds and borders which helps explore the themes of losing bear on with reality and decease.

In this entry, nosotros've chosen to cover this second definition of motif—the one that separates motifs from symbols in the hierarchy of literary devices. Even so, many reputable sources refer to motif as a kind of symbol. What you should know is that at that place are competing definitions of motif, and whether a motif is a type of symbol depends on the definition you're using.

Motif Examples

While motifs oft practice consist of literary symbols like the ones we describe above—the raven that stands for expiry, or the path that represents a manner of life—the elements that brand up motifs are not ever things. In the examples below, yous'll run across cases in which the symbolic elements of a motif are sometimes things, sometimes deportment, and sometimes events and places.

Motif in Roberto Bolaño's 2666

1 theme of Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666 is that art always escapes critics' efforts to understand information technology. Bolaño explores this theme through the motif of the futile search. Throughout the novel, different characters search for things unsuccessfully:

• The outset, overarching search is the search for a reclusive writer, Benno von Arcimboldi, who has neither published new writing nor appeared in public for decades. Three academics who take all made careers out of studying Arcimboldi lead the search, yet never find him.
• The second search is a criminal investigation into the rape and murder of hundreds of young women in the metropolis of Santa Teresa, Mexico. This search is led by the city'southward best police detectives, who believe a serial killer is responsible. Fifty-fifty though he has a distinctive signature and doesn't even endeavour to hibernate the bodies of his victims, the killer is never constitute.
• The third search is a romantic quest undertaken by a madwoman, for a poet she slept with as a young adult female. When she finds him in an insane asylum, not only does he not recognize her, but he's only interested in men.

Each of the novel'southward 3 searches proves to be fruitless, creating a broader pattern (the motif) of futile searching, which in plough supports the book's broader thematic argument that art, despite the all-time efforts of critics, has a way of resisting resolution or apprehension.

Motif in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Groovy Gatsby

One theme in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is that the American dream is empty and unattainable. The book centers around the character Jay Gatsby, who claws his way into loftier society to win the affection of the wealthy but frivolous Daisy Buchanan, and ultimately dies because of Daisy'southward selfish, reckless behavior. Fitzgerald uses the motif of the colour greenish to explore the empty promise of the American Dream past repeatedly associating the color with ideas of success, ambition, and wealth:

• Gatsby buys a mansion on the Long Island Sound, across the h2o from Daisy's estate, and each night stares longingly at the greenish light that shines from the end of Daisy'southward dock. The dark-green calorie-free is a symbol that appears multiple times in the novel—during the early stages of Gatsby's longing for Daisy, during his pursuit of her, and after he dies afterwards she abandons him. The green low-cal symbolizes Gatsby'due south longing for Daisy and his dream that he tin can recreate his past love with her, simply it also plays into the broader motif of the color light-green.
• In Chapter 6, Daisy tells Nick that she'll be handing out green cards at Gatsby's party, and informs him that he can nowadays her with ane of these green cards if he wants to buss her. So the cards themselves symbolize the very thing Gatsby desires (i.due east., Daisy's affection).
• In Affiliate 7, the car crash that leads to Gatsby's ruin, definitively destroying his dream of e'er being with Daisy, involves a greenish motorcar.
• In Affiliate 9, Gatsby's friend Nick Caraway stares at the coastline and wonders how the first settlers to America must have felt staring out at the "light-green breast of the new world."

In every instance in which the color greenish appears in the book, it is closely associated with a goal that is forever receding into the distance (whether it'south the idea of a "New World," true dear, success, or happiness). "Greenness" itself therefore becomes a motif which reinforces the broader theme of the unattainability of the American dream.

Motif in Chinua Achebe's Things Autumn Autonomously

Chinua Achebe's Things Falls Apart is nearly an Igbo warrior named Okonkwo, whose commitment to his culture'south traditions brings him honor, only also eventually leads to his downfall. In the novel, Achebe develops the theme that blindly post-obit tradition can have catastrophic consequences through the specific motif of cede.

• Throughout the novel, Okonkwo and other members of the community routinely perform symbolic rituals of sacrifice in the name of tradition, offer up animals, currency, and other valuables.
• Throughout the novel, women who requite birth to twins abandon their ain babies in the forest. This tradition, which the clan enforces out of a belief that twins are evil, alienates many members of the clan who later convert to Christianity.
• In Chapter 7, Okonkwo kills his adopted son, whom he loves deeply, in accordance with his clan's laws, permanently scarring his other son, Nwoye, who afterward joins the white Christian missionaries and colonialists.

Finally, Okonkwo loses the volition to live and commits suicide, devastated by having witnessed the white colonialists' devastation of his own customs's ancient traditions (including acts of sacrifice such every bit those described above). Okonkwo's disability to live without these traditions—all of which together make up the motif of sacrifice—supports the book'south broader thematic statement: that without the ability to accommodate and modify, the desire to preserve tradition can become fatal.

Why Do Writers Use Motifs?

Writers incorporate motifs in their piece of work for a number of reasons:

• They help writers organize symbols, plot developments, and imagery into broader patterns that emphasize the main themes of the work.
• They give a piece of work a sense of construction and continuity by creating patterns that recur throughout the work.
• They tin can help writers weave together dissimilar and seemingly unrelated parts of a narrative.
• They enable writers to subtly restate or remind the reader of certain ideas throughout a text using vivid and often memorable imagery.

Other Helpful Motif Resources

• The Wikipedia Page on Motif: A concise explanation of motif.
• The Dictionary Definition of Motif: A basic definition of the term, with a bit on the etymology: the discussion motif comes from the French give-and-take for "dominant idea or theme."
• Theme vs. Motif: A helpful article that breaks down the difference between these two terms.

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Source: https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/motif

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