This is Just to Say Analysis by William Carlos Williams

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

Plums

Plums are the central symbol in the poem. That said, it may be difficult to see why the plums should be understood as symbolic in the first place. After all, the poem is characterized by a radical simplicity that seems intent on avoiding overt symbolism. It’s true that the poem can be read as little more than an expression of the speaker’s mild guilt about having enjoyed eating some stolen plums. However, in this story of stolen plums we may detect an echo of another story of forbidden fruit: that is, the biblical story of the Fall. In the Bible, Adam and Eve commit the first sin by going against God’s decree not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Unable to quell their curiosity, they take an illicit piece of fruit from the Tree and eat it. This act led to their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. If we read “This Is Just to Say” in light of this biblical story, the plums are symbolically equivalent to the fruit taken from the Tree of Knowledge. Yet even as the plums may symbolize temptation and original sin, in Williams’s poem they’re also always just plums.

The Icebox

Aside from the plums, the only other physical object mentioned in the poem is the icebox. The icebox was a precursor of the appliance we now call a refrigerator, and it served the same basic purpose of keeping food cold to prevent spoilage. Although the speaker references the icebox in the first stanza, it isn’t until the final stanza that the icebox’s symbolic importance becomes apparent. The speaker opens the final stanza by explicitly asking for the addressee’s forgiveness:

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

This stanza (lines 9–12) could be interpreted in two different ways. The first interpretation would read the last three lines as an excuse for the first. To paraphrase: “Forgive me, but the plums were just too delicious to resist!” The second interpretation would read the last three lines not as an excuse but as an explanation. To paraphrase: “I took the plums because I wanted to experience the pleasure of eating them now rather than later.” In this second reading, the icebox symbolizes deferred pleasure. For a poem that references Catholic doctrine, the speaker may be subtly resisting the belief that earthly existence should be lived not with a focus on immediate pleasure, but with an eye toward heavenly reward after death.

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