In a Station of the Metro

Study Guide

Literary Devices

Symbols

Save

Literary Devices Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Imagist poets sought to isolate singular images or moments and record them in their concrete particularity. Because of this focus on the unique form and intensity of specific experiences, Imagist poems radically deemphasized the use of symbols. Pound himself strenuously resisted any attempt to read individual elements in his poem symbolically. He considered the use of symbols in poetry as a pointless form of ornamentation. The challenge of the Imagist poem is therefore to read without recourse to the usual search for symbolic meaning. As Pound himself insisted: “I dare say it is meaningless.” That said, the reader doesn’t have to take the poet at their word. In the case of “In a Station of the Metro,” the reader might be tempted to read the crowd as a symbol for the crush of humanity, which threatens to anonymize the individual. Likewise, we might interpret the wet, black bough as a symbol for the material reality of embodied existence, placed in opposition to the crowd’s threat to diminish the individual. Nevertheless, many critics feel that such symbolic readings undermine the real significance of Imagist poetry’s attempt to record the concrete experience of a given moment.