Implications of The Symbols to The Characters

Things that are believed by the characters contained in the story as a particular symbol either the form of thoughts, visual objects, or something tangible like superstition that in fact only believed by a handful of people could help the readers examine how the story was being told, also has implications for the nature and attitude of the characters themselves inside the story. The latter symbol is found in P. G. Wodehouse’s short story entitled “Black for Luck”, a stray black cat who is taken by Elizabeth, the main character, with its good impression with the support of a statement told by a janitor who likes locating things named Francis, that black cats bring good luck.

Her trust in the need for taking the stray cat may be based on ‘the wind blowing’ as Francis said "Black cat (s) bring luck" when Elizabeth received her manuscripts back with editorial compliment and the acceptance of being a part of 'the game' that she willingly requires to leave her own pet magazine which she claims as “Accustomed to fly refuge , almost sure of a welcome” similarly the conviction she left early statement of her distrust just by saying "I certainly shan't object to that" to beat Francis's former statement.

This stray black cat, as known as Joseph, with his behavior makes the host much in love with him as pointed out as “Elizabeth adored him...” could possibly affects Elizabeth, this Bohemian New Yorker, who lives her unprotected life and who undergoes much straining to keep her faith in the other human nature becomes a friendly soul depending mainly the footsteps of a kindly man who lives in the flat whose front door faced hers. A man whom she assumes as a stealer of other people’s cats in the afternoon when Joseph disappeared. A man whose name James Renshaw Boyd. A man who changes Joseph into his Reginald.

The perplexing fact comes from another Elizabeth’s inconsistency to look inside the symbolize of a black cat which makes herself rather hypocrite here. When she knows nothing can describes the reason why James took her cat but he is “as superstitions as a coon” then he claims her as “a sane and practical”, she believes that Joseph, the black cat, could help James in his first play (he is a playwright), and despite the fact that Elizabeth does not have any friends and also regards Joseph as just “a company”, she won’t take him back. The event implies that Elizabeth is getting denied and refused her distrust again that she indirectly turns out to support the power of the black cat by saying “And how do you suppose I should feel if your play failed simply for lack of a black cat?” to James.

The combination of the character’s conviction is apparently destroyed by their behavior of giving reaction to each other later. An “Ah” from James when Elizabeth tells that she has been given more responsibility as an official adviser to readers is replied by Elizabeth who’s unsympathetically hearing that there are so many players in James’ four-act comedy. Such ambivalence is also apparent as the narrator states, “one moment peace ; the next chaos”, it may be considered that the presence of the black cat is probably not so significantly affected for both of them, because if it does, the story may be shown continually proving that have a black cat is indeed a luck. The narrator’s narrating the story with the tendency to be more confusing here instead of constructing hopes to the reader to get little triumph by also believing the symbolize of the black cat itself which is narrated in the preceding paragraphs. The confusion comes up because of “a cold fight” that is not so clearly depicted in the story, a fight that makes Elizabeth would neither forgive James nor forgive herself and finally decides to avoid him although James and Joseph is the only two friends she had in New York seems like the irony thereof. Moreover, in the case of the symbol as if relieving himself by not physically appearing and eliminating its role in the story.

But then the role of Joseph in the story is displayed again when Elizabeth assumes that James had sent a folded scrap of paper and left this in front of her door on the previous night, as he states on that paper, “I am just off to the theatre. Won’t you wish me luck? ............ Joseph is purring like a dynamo”. The story suggests that the absence of Joseph can be absolutely the lure for Elizabeth to come to the theatre accompanying James supported by the fact that they are the friends in the city who both always feel lonely.

Moreover, after they through all the series of the events contrary to what they might expected at the first place that “Black cats bring luck” is deserved to be trusted, I arrive to the climax which is appeared when James’ hope is again ‘stranded’ on the theater as the narrator states, “James’s play was a hideous failure” then makes Elizabeth perhaps rebuild her distrust again by saying, “Let him (the black cat) go, the fraud". This is how the symbols can reversal those characters’ trust and distrust by probably depending what sort of luck their mean.

While in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart”, the focus symbol is the eye which is the only reason for “I” to kill the old man. How the eye can possibly affected “I”, as later known as also the narrator, influences through several contradictions. The first contradiction is built up by the narrator’s first attempt to try showing him to the readers that he is not mad but in the first sentence of this story as he states, “True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am”  is the way of him describing how he probably confesses it, too.

Furthermore, the fact that “I loved the old man” very contradictory at all with his motivation to kill the old man in every midnights by sneaking into his room for one week. His tendency to be obsessed towards the old man's eye that may lead him to the wrong perception between love and hate. Then the irony arises when he assumes that the old man's eye as he believes as the "Evil Eye" which led to him like this and that’s why he has to literally take the eye. Moreover, the other misperception is when he does not so well know that separated the eye from human body will immediately kill the whole of life and the addition of the narrator to "dismembered the corpse" by cutting off his head, arms, and legs, is probably the development of the irony itself.

The different types of how the symbol implicates the character comes from the attitude of Mr. Hooper in Hawthorne's "The Minister Black Veil" which is more determinant to face the symbolize of his black veil. Although he received any kind of scorn from various groups in his congregation and even got an immediate protest from his lover to take away his black veil, but Mr. Hooper will not do it until the rest of his life. As he states to his lover, Elizabeth, “the veil is a type and a symbol”, it may implies that he has realized it was a symbol which he must consistently guards.