Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Sequoia Trees
Scottie and Madeleine’s visit to the forest of sequoia
trees is one of Scottie’s last attempts to return to a healthy worldview.
He tells Madeleine that the tree’s scientific name means “always
green, ever living,” making explicit the idea that sequoia trees
symbolize life in the film. However, the trees remind Madeleine
of her own mortality. In response to this immense life force, she
says, “I don’t like it, knowing I have to die.” The couple looks
at the cross-section of a felled tree, which shows how old the tree
was when it was chopped down and suggests that the tree would have
gone on living forever had it not been for human intervention. Madeleine’s
response to the trees is complex. She appears simultaneously to
be afraid of dying and afraid to embrace life. Ultimately, she runs
away from the forest, feeling alienated from life and wanting to
die.
Green
The color green appears frequently throughout the film,
typically in association with eerie or uncanny images. For example,
when Scottie first sees Madeleine in Ernie’s Restaurant, she stands
out vividly from everyone else in the room because of her dramatic
green stole, giving her a startling and somewhat unsettling appearance.
In his apartment, as he becomes more withdrawn from the outside
world and immersed in a dream world, Scottie wears a green sweater.
Judy, who seems to be the ghost of Madeleine, first appears wearing
a green dress. Her room is illuminated at night by the building’s
green neon sign, and when she emerges into Scottie’s view as the
fully transformed Madeleine, she is bathed in the green light, making
her look even more like the specter of the dead Madeleine. Thus,
while green sometimes symbolizes life, as in the sequoia forest,
it also symbolizes the ghostly or uncanny. Both associations with
the color green are traditional and can be seen in the earliest
folktales. For example, because green can represent the spring and
the rebirth of nature, it is also associated with the life after
death embodied by ghosts and spirits, as in Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight.
