Does symbolism have only one level of depth?

Question

When I use symbolism, I think of replacing something concrete with an abstract idea, but can you use these abstract ideas and then tell a story inside a story that's inside a story?

As in:

Using symbolism to tell an allegory and use the symbolism inside the allegory to tell yet another allegory.

Actual story > Allegory > Another allegory

I feel like this is not possible, or was never done. When I think of symbolism, I think of an unique space where all symbolism have the same depth? Are there other ways in which a symbol can be deeper than another one?

Answer 1

Yes, this is possible. It's called deeply nested fiction (and happens to be a particular interest of mine!). Many of the great classic works of world literature, such as the Arabian Nights, use this pattern. It's likewise common in modern metafiction.

In general, in my experience, the more deeply you nest your fiction, the simpler, the less realist, the more archetypal and the more symbolic the deeper levels become. So there's an effective limit to how many levels you can reasonably have.

Answer 2

You may be interested in experimental literature -- not everyone is into writing for the sake of Standard Storytelling.

I adore 4th-wall breaking theater, such as "Six Characters in Search of an Author." I love meta. Behind-the-scenes tours at Disney are amazing -- you see not the story of the ride, but the decisions made, and perhaps what they're revealing about the time of their creation (both the source material and the ride itself). So I get you about being interested in nested symbolism.

In Scott McCloud (of Understanding Comics)'s TED Talk, he divides expression into several quadrants, and some are about experimenting with form, and some more focused on storytelling. From around 05:25

In comics, I know that it results in sort of a formalist attitude towards trying to understand how it works. Then there's another, more classical attitude which embraces beauty and craft; another one which believes in the pure transparency of content; and then another, which emphasizes the authenticity of human experience and honesty and rawness. ... And they reflect a dichotomy of art and delight on left and the right; tradition and revolution on the top and the bottom. And if you go on the diagonal, you get content and form, and then beauty and truth.

Some related terms (to see if you have a "home" in one of these) to check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_poets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdist_fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_modernism (and the list of subgenres in the info box)

Answer 3

Here's the problem with what you are proposing:

What you should be telling, what your readers want to read, is your actual story. Symbolism is a tool you use to tell that story: by using the symbol, you shed light on your story, you show and accentuate something that you couldn't have shown otherwise, or at least couldn't have shown with equal clarity. For example, in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights:

My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it; I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath a source of little visible delight, but necessary.

You can also use symbolism to connect the particular of the story to the universal. Consider, for example, the famous monologue from Shakespeare's As You Like It:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
they have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts

(Look here for more examples, and their explanations.)

Now, what do you do by hiding the symbolism behind even more symbolism, by using an allegory for an allegory? Instead of clarifying, you're obscuring. Instead of understanding better, you reader now has to puzzle out what you want to say. That's a sure way to lose the reader: if one can't understand what you're saying, why would one read it?