Color Symbols in Literature

Literature involves using colors to represent something beyond its literal meaning, influencing readers' understanding and helping writers convey implicit messages without explaining things outright.

Colors are often assigned meanings through color-charged everyday experiences or cultural associations, such as red being a sign of danger or traffic lights. There is no one way to explain what a specific color stands for, and color symbolism is especially evident in the visual arts.

In fiction and poetry, color symbolism has several functions, including emotional response, setting, and deep meaning. A wise color choice can give a new depth of meaning to a plot point, making it an essential aspect of literature.

Meanings of Some Colors:

Red, the color of roses, blood, and fire, symbolizes love, passion, life, and protection in literature. However, it also represents evil, danger, violence, and destruction. Red's fiery nature implies warmth, while fire can maintain life and destroy it. For instance, in "The Scarlet Letter," red is often used as a symbol of sin and passion, particularly the crime of adultery and its consequences.

Yellow in literature symbolizes happiness, optimism, and cheerfulness but also signifies sickness, madness, and cowardice. At the same time, its hues may be associated with both positive emotions and negative symbols such as poisonous animals and insects, highlighting the contradictions in color and its association with various emotions.

Green in literature symbolizes renewal, rebirth, and nature. It is associated with spring, youth, safety, achievement, and money. Shakespeare connected green to jealousy, while the ancient Greeks linked it to illness, with a similarity to yellow. Green's association with nature is usually positive, but it can also hint at jealousy or disease.

Blue in literature symbolizes calmness, serenity, and wisdom while also representing coldness, profound sorrow, and depression. Its association with the sky gives it tranquility, while the icy blue hue represents coldness and emotional distance. Blue is also associated with water, and it is often associated with grieving souls.

White in literature symbolizes purity, goodness, innocence, and morality. It can also symbolize coldness, absence, and pallor. White is often associated with toxic perfectionism and a lack of feelings in a negative way. In Moby-Dick, the color white is used as a symbol of beauty, but it can also symbolize terror.

Black in literature symbolizes certainty, sophistication, and authority while also being the color of evil, despair, death, and mourning. Its mysterious and scary properties make it the opposite of white, representing innocence and purity. Gothic literature, like Poe's "The Raven," uses black as the ultimate symbol of death and grief, while the raven represents loss.

Purple, a color that combines red and blue's properties, symbolizes passion, serenity, mystery, creativity, and dignity. Its negative connotations include decay and arrogance. Due to its high pigment cost, purple became associated with royalty, since getting the color purple is extremely hard and expensive; thus, some find it garish or condescending. It's also associated with magic and twilight.

The gold color in literature signifies wealth, high status, and heroism. It can signify fakeness and arrogance. Gold has been used in religious buildings since ancient times. In The Great Gatsby, gold is used to create an impression of wealth and status.

Resources Cited:

• Color Symbolism in Literature: Color Meanings & Examples (custom-writing.org)