Literal figures

The opposition of literal v. figurative language is problematic for a number of reasons, one of them being that words can become quasi-figures without ever ceasing to be literal.

Suppose I write a short story in which the word “gardenia” appears several times.  In each case, it is literal, referring to actual (well, fictional-actual) gardenias.  It doesn’t become a metaphor or simile for something else; I never say “she’s a gardenia” or “she’s fragrant as a gardenia.”  By well-placed and significant repetitions, however, I can pack all kinds of “figurative” force into the word.

For instance:

The first time it’s used, it refers to the first gardenia that appears in springtime.  It’s a literal gardenia, but because of its setting in the story, it comes to be associated with spring.  It’s not quite a metonym for spring; it is just a gardenia.  It starts out as a quasi-metonym.

The next time the word is used, it comes up in a conversation in which the garden’s owner is explaining that she brought it back from a disastrous family trip to Hawaii.  Whenever she looks at the plant and its flower, she thinks of that trip.  We’re reminded that gardenias are tropical plants, and the associations with life and spring are expanded. At the same time, gardenia-as-quasi-metonym-for-spring becomes associated with disastrous-trip-to-tropical-paradise.  The quasi-metonym turns ironic.  Perhaps, though, in the conversation there is some hint that the recurring blossom of the plant gives hope that joy can return.  But the word never wavers from its stolid literality.  It remains just a gardenia, but it’s gathering a cluster of associations.

Toward the end of the story, the flower is fading.  The end of hope, the final loss of Paradise.  Whatever it means, it is both literal (just the gardenias, ma’am, just the gardenias) and a figure.  It’s a literal figure.

Hokey, I know, but perhaps not so hokey that the theoretical point gets lost.

Much of the Bible’s imagery is of this literal-figurative sort.