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Symbolism In 'Janus And The Boat'

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Everyone has objects and items in their life that hold a deeper meaning to them than what meets the eye. These objects often insignificant to everyone else means so much to you. These pieces symbolize to much more than just the items is itself. They hold memories of your past, current ideas, or insight of the future, and some may symbolize so much more. In the short stories “Janus” and “The Boat”, the authors explore the use of symbolism to give deeper insight into the lives of the protagonists.

Beattie used a bowl to symbolically to represent Andreas life. Andrea a real estate agent seemingly has a normal life at first but as the bowl gets introduced to the reader and the story progresses we learn so much more about her two-faced life. The bowl represents her affair with her lover. He got the bowl for her. It also shows …show more content…

A tight-knit family in a small fishing village in Nova Scotia. Their boat is named after the maiden name of the narrators mother Jenny Lynn. It follows the traditions of that community as the other fishing boats are also named after female members of the each family respectively. This is one of the symbols the boat has. The mother as well is the most devoted character to the traditions of the fishing village compared to the rest of the family. The boat is a symbol of duty that the mother feels she has, has it is her maiden not her current one the boat is named after, which furthers this feeling of duty to preserve the fishing traditions that her ancestors once started. At the end of the story the farther goes missing of the back of the boat as they returned home during a storm. It is not stated in the story but a bit implied to the reader that the father committed suicide to give his son the freedom to further his education as he would no longer feel the obligation to work with his farther on the boat has he is no-longer

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