When you hear the term "objective correlative" in workshop or lit-crit circles, don't dismiss it as a useless expression of the scholarly class. Some might argue it's simply another way of saying "metaphor," or "symbol," or "show-don't-tell"—but in my opinion, it is a precise description of a literary device for which there is no equivalent.
"Objective correlative" describes a concrete story element (an object, action, situation, or event) that maps to the story's emotional core. Said differently, it is an object from the physical, outer world of a story that correlates with elements of the mysterious, hidden, inner world of that same story. T.S. Eliot argued that writers neglect objective correlatives at their own risk, going as far as to blame Shakespeare himself for foolishly eschewing objective correlatives in the "artistic failure" known as Hamlet. (His words, not mine.)
T.S. Eliot went as far as to blame Shakespeare
himself for foolishly eschewing objective correlatives
in the "artistic failure" known as Hamlet.
If you've ever struggled with expressing emotion in your work, try giving objective correlatives a spin. Say your protagonist—a small-town girl with big-city dreams—has lost her father in a factory accident. Instead of writing her misery through teary-eyed proclamations of sadness and maudlin interior monologues about the meaning of life, find powerful physical stand-ins for her grief: a snow-blanketed field, an iron-tinged sky, a smokestack coughing grime into the air. And setting isn't alone in this game. Dialogue can evoke sadness, too (she goes for beers after work and all her friend can talk about is her dying rosebush ), as can action (she kills a spider and is immediately consumed by guilt). Objective correlatives evoke genuine emotion through reach, frequency, precision, and persistence. Build up subjective emotions with objective facts and it'll be impossible to demolish the house of empathy you've constructed for the reader.
Comments