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제목 [No.222 Opinion] The Power of a Symbol
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The Power of a Symbol

 

Department of Library and Information Science Cheong-Ok Yoon

 

In this column, I have often talked about the pleasure of reading books. I am not a teacher or scholar of literature. However, as a reader or consumer of literary content, I sometimes share my experience with students how to read books in a better way.

 

To students, I emphasize that one of the pleasures of reading literature is to draw images from text in my mind. Therefore, I suggest them to read books, if possible, before watching a movie or a drama based on literature. It is because the images expressed in a movie often hinder readers from creating their own images from books, as I have occasionally experienced. However, since the images from a movie might help readers understand later what they read, it is not easy to insist on what is right.

 

I used to mention the power of symbols. Writers put symbols, hidden or exposed, into their work to present ideas and meanings in storytelling. Although where to find and how to interpret symbols might vary, it could be fun for readers to find those symbols during reading. However, with the tremendous influence of visual media at the present time, the power of symbols in images also seems as important as that in text.

 

As a self-designated advocate of reading books, I sometimes enjoy watching TV dramas via Netflix. Although most of time I only follow stories without paying much attention, I became amazed to see the power of a symbol visualized as an image in a drama titled 'Lost'.

 

In a strange place a woman and a man got to know better each other, talking about what they used to be. Man talked about a poor boy, with his mother, desperately looking for a place to scatter his father's ashes. He said "I went to the mountain, and then to the sea, and then went home".

 

She said "Very fortunate." Later they left separately. Man headed for the sea again for the first time since then. Woman took a bus to Seoul. Sitting on the bus, she said to herself again, "It was very fortunate to go home." At that moment, passed very briefly an image of her handbag ornament which looked a yellow ribbon, the symbol of the Se-wol Ferry.

 

It could have been a simple coincidence that an ornament look something like that. But I didn't try to verify it, rather asked myself whether somebody wanted to say something at such a brief instant. The image presented in that scene hit me hard. Realizing that someone is also trying hard to remember, I began to think about a certain moment in April again. It was the power of a symbol.

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