hello and welcome to mrs. a B literature today's lesson we are focusing on exploring the key symbols and motifs in The Handmaid's Tale okay as normal you just continue with the tutorial if you feel that you need to stop to do any notes then just pause the tutorial take the notes and then come back to it and restart it when you're ready good luck hope you enjoy okay quick do now task the hammo style is full of doubles you can see a picture here from the TV series where the the example is of the two have maids who have to walk down the street together as a double okay so what I'd like you to do is just to think about if we're looking at symbolism of modes and motifs think about doubles throughout the book are there any doppelgangers a doppelganger is a double is a double of a character are there any echoes of characters are there any character sort of foils or sort of symbols of one particular character reappearing in another for example can you highlight a couple haha a couple of these doubles even and explain why at word might have included that doubling at that point in the novel just a word of warning for this tutorial it's likely you're going to need your hands tell your copy of your book with you as you proceed through the lesson okay so just pause the tutorial now and continue it when you're ready I've done a little bit myself here we can see the motif of doubles appears again and again we'll come back to this idea of doubling later on when we look at mirrors and the symbolism mirrors because there's an awful lot of doubling in reflections within the the novel but here we've got many doubles for off rate the first one is is the woman that has lived in her room before this ghostly dark double of a handmaid who she finds out later has committed suicide she fills that almost like the the other hand maid is existing in that room with her there was always she says there were always two of us and the significance of that very simple sentence there there were always two of us RiRi occurs when we realize that how maids are not allowed to walk around the streets on their own so when they're sent out to to do errands to do their shopping which is one of their their tasks that they they're having to do there's always two of them so again this idea here where she walks out with off Glen off Glen is quite an interesting double not only is she the double of Oh Fred here we get the quotation double I walk the street showing that you know sort of Moira is literally the kind of the physical the the appearance double of Oh Fred isn't interesting and this is completely off the point that the idea of I walk the street there I think that this is deliberate by Margot outward using this phraseology the idea of the streetwalkers or a prostitute perhaps a suggestion of offered zone distaste or maybe a humor in her own Mohammed eidetic narrative where she she feels a little bit like you know that she's a double of a prostitute almost from the from the previous times Oh Fred oh that's right off Glen also turns out to be more like more as double than off Fred she Moira is a character foil I would say for Offred she rebels we're offered dozen or Fred doesn't accept she rebels in her in her head but physically Oh Fred is less rebellious than Moira interestingly off Glenn has seems to be more like a double she's partnered with off Rhett butt off Glenn we find out is a rebel in disguise and she is also rebellious in the way that she comments on things like the private Ganza and again decided of committing suicide after salvaging is perhaps something that you could argue may have happened or may well happen to Moira another double is Janine Janine is off red gone further I would say she's a warning of what might happen if Alfred gives up hope Janine is a laughable character we we pity her but the pity is quite condescending and she appears at various stages in the narrative she's the willing victim that the Rachel and Leah center with the testifying and she also becomes pregnant as off Warren and then lastly her appearance at the party where she lapses into this very sort of violent bacchanal type character who rips rips the the victim apart at the partition she is off red gone further afraid also tells the story of the commander's wife with flashbacks to her earlier career there is a doubling here almost off red is she remembers back to her career how she was successful in the workplace and of course we get this sense as well because Serena joy was a TV personality she was a gospel singer she was a presenter she was somebody who is was looked up to by women across the the nation but both offered answering the joy you have to leave that behind and become trapped by the Gili audience society the ideology that women should occupy the private sphere and then the public sphere so again that there is there there are parallels between her and Serena joy we also get doubling in terms of the offer it's past life so at the time before this doubling of two types two parts of offer Ed's personality that you know one is conformist one is ambitious as a as a career woman she's also a symbol of self of the women what women have become past and present how they perhaps have never had any rights or or women who struggle with with defending their own rights in society so she can be a become a double of perhaps the women who are reading the novel at the time okay so there's a few ideas there I'm sure you you've got some different you may have got some similar but I would imagine all of those are valid okay so moving on then we now move on to the symbolism of the color red now we've done a fair amount of this in class so can you list those symbolisms of the color red within the novel what can you remember we've done in class about this symbolism I'll just give you a few minutes to continue write your notes and then we'll continue with the with the presentation so if you stop the tutorial now and then we can continue in a second okay so on the next couple of slides got some images we again the image of red what does it symbolize it actually is very very contradictory in its visual symbolism so I just want you to have a look at these these images and there are plenty more symbols that you know that are related to the color red so what are the connotations in each of the instances are they all consistent or are they contradictory what I've already perhaps suggested that you might find some contradictions there are they specific to a particular culture or maybe to a particular religion or do they cross over cultures do you think now I think I've put I've put four pictures on there but again symbolically if you think of things that are red what does that symbolize you know what is red in itself symbolize I suppose okay alright so moving on then again if you need to with these images just stop the tutorial and continue when you're ready now Margaret Atwood wrote a poem called a red shirt she wrote it dedicated to her sister and the first section of the poem provides an interesting commentary on perhaps what her focus was regarding the the symbolism of the color red in the Handmaid's Tale I'm gonna read this to you and what I'd like you to do is just think about any of these echoes from this poem that you might have actually seen in the Handmaid's Tale and just sort of making two quick note of them as I'm reading a red shirt for Ruth my sister and I are sewing a red shirt for my daughter she pins I hem we pass the scissors back and forth across the table children should not wear it a man once told me young girls should not wear red in some countries it is the color of death in others passion in others war you know there's anger in others sacrifice have shed blood a girl should be a veil a white shadow bloodless as a moon on water I'm just gonna stop there the the poem is a lot longer but again you can sort of see the the ideas running through here even to the point of we're going to come back to this in a moment the idea of the scissors sort of snipping and sewing that red shirts that trimming of the red shirt there but I love the idea of the children not wearing red but who told her it was a man that told her again the sort of deontic modality in that in that poem whither should not a modal auxiliary verb there is repeated young girl should not wear red and then the listing that comes in the third stanza there which is the color of death in in others passion in others war in others angers anger in others the sacrifices shed blood again all of those those images in fact it's not just one culture in fact it seems to be that Gilead has adopted all of those those symbolisms of the color red and then finally the idea and we've got this kind of parallelism almost with the the second stanza a girl should not wear red - a girl should be again the deontic modality there a value a white shadow bloodless as a mineral water so again this idea you know what the young girls would look like so what did you sort of spend some time exploring that now interestingly we're talking about red but one motif that comes up quite a lot in the novel is this idea of red shoes there's lots of references to you know putting on your red shoes that they're flat offered so they're flat and they're practical red shoes does have a certain cultural significance and I don't know whether this this poem actually kind of refers to that the when she was a child Margaret was quite interested in a film called the red shoes and it's based on a sort of a cultural folktale of the same name in fact I've seen the ballet of of that story which is basically where a dancer is very very ambitious accepts a pair of red shoes from a man from an admirer and he says if she wears these shoes she will become successful as a ballet dancer and she puts her shoes on and when she wears them she's the most beautiful dancer in the world and she's captivated by her dancing and she enchants her her audiences but the shoes are magical and they start to control her so that when she takes them off she yearns to put them on and when she has them on she is literally enchanted by them and becomes overwhelmed and consumed by them so that in the end had identity her original identity no longer exists it's a it's a great ballet if you ever get to see it but if not have a look just look up that folktale now you could perhaps stop the tutorial at this point and take a look to do a little bit of research on the red shoes now potentially this has become then an icon of the idea of female independence this idea of red shoes perhaps they they do you know are they captivating are they you know they making you a captive the course the alternative which actually could be the opposite is red shoes do a signal signifying the idea of female independence in terms of kind of quantity they're quite provocative sexually so the sort of sexual allure of red shoes actually perhaps aren't contradictory in in The Handmaid's Tale but some things to think about there okay so what else can we say then so the color red I'm sure you've got this I'm sure you have this in that initial task when we looked at when you looked at this but we've got red is the symbol of fertility so the hand mates primary function is to reproduce and of course as a female reproductive system alfrid actually says the color of blood defines us you know that is what they are identified with this idea of their their female body their feminine body the you know the fact that they the menstrual blood actually does signify their fertility that they're still fertile the irony is you can see on the next bullet point there is a menstrual blood also appears when it appears it shows failure because of course when a woman men straights it's a sign that she's not pregnant so there is a contradiction in the idea of the hope displayed by the menstrual blood but also the failure when it appears as well we've also got the blood present at childbirth and we see this very clearly in the birthing section of the the novel and this idea of kind of the red curtains in the the car that transports them to the the birthing so there's there again this idea of you know the blood present the blood letting you know at childbirth there's another intertextual linked with a book called it's a sure I suppose a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne he's an American was an American writer wrote The Scarlet Letter and the basis of the story goes is that Hester Prynne the female protagonist there I was accused of adultery and her punishment was to wear a scarlet a on her dress so that she can show everybody that she is an adulteress so again this idea that to read symbols you know women who have who are to sexually independent we see this idea in this motif again in the crucible written by Arthur Miller loosely with the character of Abigail who again is accused of a myth admitting Tory committing adultery and part of the the tragedy of the crucible is her ways of how she blames others to try and actually deflect the blame away from herself you can see in the picture there I mean this is obviously a very very familiar image now of you know people dressed up as handmaids in fact the the whole handmade sort of cape and hood which you've got here is symbolic of women trying to ironic ly trying to campaign for their own rights we've seen it in protests in America for example but the red is the color of their habit it looks like a nun's habit but they're actually defined by it and Offred describes herself as a sister dripped in blood okay so other color symbolism so you can see the pictures here if these are all from the TV series which I wouldn't recommend actually viewing until you have taken this exam because it will become too confusing so please don't look at the TV series until you've finished that said the some of the pictures from the the TV series are actually really useful so here we've got the three costumes of three main female protagonists or you could argue aunt Lydia there on the the bottom is a is the antagonist Serena joys she's conflicted she's there's ambiguity about her because she in fact both of them because they're both constrained still by the the regime even though you could argue they have slightly more power than The Handmaid's anyway so we've got the three costumes now costumes and color symbolism are highly related in the Handmaid's Tale so the first of all I haven't got the commands are up here but the black the costume of the commander represents fear authority and autocracy so autocracy is this idea that man one man perhaps is controlling and controlling in a totalitarian regime it's interesting that and I think this probably isn't a coincidence that Atwood chose black for the commander's is the priests wear black and of course we have I'm not dealing with the religious imagery here because it's probably another lesson in itself but the idea priests wearing that black traditionally now I looked this up and symbolically it represents the priests dying to himself I say himself now of course we have female priests a bit like a nun and so a nun will wear a black habit once she graduates but when she's a novice I believe she wears white so it's actually quite in some ways there's some similarities with the Handmaid's Tale but the priests work for the greater good the idea of black actually kind of you know taking away any individuality I suppose all of the colors they group this stereotype and group these people that have certain functions in the in gilliardi and society you've then got the blue of the wives the most obvious connection there is symbolic of the Virgin Mary the idea again that you know they are fairly asexual the Virgin Mary hasn't had sex obviously before she fell pregnant but this idea that they're they're rolling in the society is not about their sexuality it's not about their fertility it's about presenting a role it's sort of a feminine role within the house and again we'll deal with that a little bit more later the Cokie of the ants there is quite interesting it's a military color so again she does wear a dress they all wear dresses but the femininity seems to have been taken out if you look at the difference between The Handmaid's dress which actually does show the curves it shows the hips compared to perhaps the other two without femininity things have been taken out there apparently I mean I looked this up but apparently the Nazis they they had a rank of group of military called stormtroopers nothing to do with Star Wars and they were known as the brown shirt because they wore brown and actually if you look at the cocky uniforms of the British Army as well it's very military the unmarried girls wore white obviously symbolic of purity and the Econo was quite interesting they will they wear stripes is basically a functional uniform a bit like a nurse and the old-fashioned nurses perhaps used to wear very very thin stripes but also perhaps symbolic of the stripes of prisoners interesting again and I think I think you do get some TV series but again don't watch it before they they can wear red blue and green actually suggest they're meant to fulfill all of the female roles obviously the green they're being servant classes so the martha's the blue the symbolizing the the wives and the red The Handmaid's so some again quite a lot of good colour symbolism okay the eyes now we the eyes of Big Brother you can see that's one of the logos on the at the top there is used and the Margaret Atwood seems to have adopted this motif this logo for her own gilliardi and society part of the gilliardi and logo depending on which one you look at actually does include the eye as a central part of the design now eyes a society which everything is visible to an unknown hostile hostile Authority sometimes known as a pen optic so pan meaning total so you know topically a pandemic is something that is global you see in The Hunger Games no Panem is the name of the the government in the new America in The Hunger Games that that kind of prefix their pan suggesting total or global now of course Gilead was only supposed to represent he's only supposed to represent sort of America but the idea here of that somebody unseen is all-knowing is very clear in the Handmaid's Tale he's actually something that Margaret Atwood got from 1994 with the phrase big brother where we get the TV series from Big Brother is always watching you and the idea in in 1984 that actually is not just surveillance and visual control but actually the authorities can control your mind and your thoughts it goes 1984 goes one step further I would say than the hamate style so a panopticon ven tional feature of a dystopian fiction which we could argue how my style kind of falls into that genre so and then the last one I've got there is of course one of the phrases that people use in gilead all the time is under his eye he's referring to God but again this idea that we've got this all-knowing all-seeing God who is judgmental and whilst the phrase is supposed to suggest that it's a you know a comfort to whoever says it's like a blessing to whoever says that again there is there is this ambiguity with this phrase because there is a sense of underlying threat with it as well and the other thing that I found quite interesting if you look at the the section where off red looks around a room for the first time she she goes she says all I wanted to save for this and she she sections of room off and deals with the section of it each day and part of that narrative she looks at the ceiling and she realizes that there is a bit of a kind of a crack in the plaster on the ceiling there is something that looks like an eye though against symbolic that she is always being watched even when she feels she's she's on her own in her own room perhaps again this idea that she has no privacy you know she can't she can't lock the door for example suggesting that she's under surveillance all the time ok so the next one is mirrors so how maids are not allowed mirrors they're not allowed to look at their own reflection the reasoning behind it is that fundamentalist Christians would would argue vanity is one of the deadly sins so self vanity so it's against the law but symbolically this lack of mirrors that she removes the handmaids identity because they're unable to look on their appearance anymore you know the face being kind of the site of or one of the major sites of your own identity the removal of mirrors also links to the removal of other dangerous objects so for example books and other things that could be used as weapons in fact the irony years is that both mirrors if you break them and books because of what's contained in them both of these could actually be formed into weapons perhaps one of the reasons why her maids are not allowed them in another instance authorid does actually say that when she's listening to the commander read before the ceremony and she says that you know books are too dangerous they kept locked away because women are not supposed to read them ok I just want you just to spend a few more minutes now before you move on thinking about reflections or mirrors where do they appear in the novel and what might the significance of this be so again just pause the tutorial at this point take some notes and then when you're ready you can restart right actually if we think of that mirrors are actually what we call a prescribed object in other words they're forbidden mirrors actually and reflections occur quite a lot in the novel so we have a repeat repeated motif here so there is one in the hall in the commander's house but as offered looked at it distorts a reflection so it again it distorts her identity she describes it as a round convex peer glass which is a circular mirror like the eye of a fish and myself in it like a distorted shadow a parody of something so it distorts her image but again the link between mirrors and eyes here is really really clear as she walks up I think it's on in the hallway so she walks up the stairs it's almost like something's watching her again you've got the hall mirror again my face just a distant and distorted the use of that word again distorted there twice suggesting that you know this that the symbolism there that it's these are differently and she her and identity is changed and distorted by gilliard and then again a brief wife wife is a traditionally is like a ghost I suppose we called you know maybe we call us sort of a thin pale pale looking child away fanned stray but the original kind of derivation of that word comes from the idea of sort of being so pale and ghost-like and poor I suppose in the eye of the glass that hangs on the downstairs war and then finally in the curved hallway mirror again the same mirror I flip past a red shape at the edge of my own field of vision a wraith here of red smoke now it's interesting it's not the same word as wife here Wraith does mean ghosts so a waif is a ghost of oneself it's a wait and stray a Wraith is a ghost but the ideas are similar reflections here she can catch a reflection of herself that they have to be fleeting they can't be any more than that she's not allowed to be seen to be looking in the mirror what she sees anyway as a distortion and then also this idea of mirrors occurs again we see a mirror in Jezebel's which goes into the toilets massive difference here they haven't taken the mirrors out to Jezebel's because women need to look at their reflection because of course they need to be sexually attractive to the men there so it's an important part of their role in their function so here they haven't removed the mirror she says you need to know here what you look like but also not necessarily in a mirror we also catch a reflection of a thread and off Glen in the windows soul Scrolls where Alfred says she's like my own reflection and mirror from which I am moving away again this kind of because they wouldn't know what each other looks like so the wings on the hats on the on the headdresses that they have don't allow them to look into each other's faces it's a it's another mechanism of control and the only way they can actually see what each other looks like and facial expressions is to look in this window ironically in Soul scrolls which is obviously where they try and get wisdom from God and then kind of prayers are answered through this ticker tape kind of system actually there is also a realization that whilst they can look at each other's faces in the reflection that they do still look exactly the same and this lack of individual individualism is something that perhaps it's offered at this point that she really has had her identity taken away okay so I apologize for the lecture like focus of this lesson I hope it's useful and I hope it sparks other ideas that you can also think about because obviously these are just mine and there's plenty more to go so you know I'm only really sort of scratching the surface on some of these things okay so the next symbol is flowers now I like this I think the first thing to do is just I've given you the extract here from Chapter three in the book this is where Ofra goes out into the garden and she sees the wife tending the flowers have a go just stop the tutorial for the moment you can look in your book it's literally at the beginning of the chapter three I haven't put the page numbers because the pages in my book is slightly different to yours but I have a look at it annotate is part of the text I think you've looked at it in lessons anyway so what is the symbolism of the flowers here and again once you've finished then feel free to restart the tutorial so I really like this extract so she goes out by the back door I mean that's symbolic in itself into the garden which is large and tidy how does this I mean it's really described Serena joy large and tidy alone in the middle but look at the plants that are growing there so we have a willow weeping catkins around the edge this the plant life here is symbolic of misery and depredation so a willow is actually they've missed out the word but willow we normally call it a weeping willow it has droopy very very long sort of strands for its leaves and weeping catkins are the same they're drooping down words the idea obviously weeping city looks like they're shedding tears we've got the flower borders now flowers in this in in the novel represent fertility and we have two different types of flowers described here the first ones of the daffodils which are now fading and then we've also got the tulips which are just coming into season at the moment the tulips are opening their cups spilling out color I'll come to the next bit in a moment but the idea here that the daffodils are now fading I know daffodil too yellow but I just think this is symbolic of the the older of Commander's wives that you know that color that perhaps they once had when they were younger is is it's fading away and their fertility because they otherwise I wouldn't have needed handmade if they were fertile so this kind of fading I think he's quite symbolic the tulips are opening their cups is openly sexual in its imagery you know opening their cuts opening their legs opening themselves up to be impregnated all of this spilling out color again maybe this idea of blood we've talked about before the spillage of blood it comes back here in the this idea so the tulips represent the bodying the Fertile hand mates if then says the tulips are red darker crimson towards the stem as if they've been cut and are beginning to heal they're again perhaps sort of symbolic of pregnancy and childbirth there or even possibly the idea of cesarean section we're then told the garden is the domain of the commander's wife so there's a huge irony here commander's wife who is infertile is tending these flowers that are the symbol of fertility looking out through my shatterproof window of and seen her in it her knees on a cushion like blue veil thrown over her wide gardening hat basket at aside with shares in it and pieces of string for tying the flowers into place the garden detailed to the commander told the Guardian even detailed to the commander does the heavy digging the commander's wife directs pointing with a stick many of the wives have such Gardens it's something for them to order and maintaining careful your irony there is that most undone her children's they can't care for the children their care for the gardens it's like a substitute child so I'll just go back there the idea there again of I really liked the idea of the shears again in the TV production they do this quite well the fact that she has a basket and there's a sense of her Envy and a jealousy of the hamate here as she snips the stems of the tulips and effectively kills them but what she wants to do to them not only that is that she gathers those flowers together and she ties them in place the suggestion that she is in control and that she wants to hurt The Handmaid's that because their fur tile okay I'm gonna move on now and look at another time Margaret Atwood's or offered in a narrative almost quotes that time in the garden word-for-word and it's a short while on when she looks at the people on the wall with the sacks over their heads and she she notices one has a red smile which is the blood that's come through the sack so again the red of the tulip is repeated here and what we've got is in a figurative sense here this is I look at the one red smile the red of the smile is the same as the red of the tulips in Serena Joy's garden towards the base of the flowers where they're beginning to heal the red isn't saying that there is no connection the tulips are not true lips of blood the red smiles are not flowers neither thing makes a comment on the other the tulip is not a reason for disbelief in the hangs ban or vice versa so again this idea here she makes that connection between the red of the blood and the red of the the tulips that direct link between blood and the flower she acknowledges the red is the same but she actually realizes that the red here is not about fertility it's not about flowers it's not about femininity it's about the the darkness that's at the heart of the gilead regime this idea again that all of the practices in society are there's an undertone of violence that runs through it and we see that undertone of violence in the previous extract where Serena Joyce is Marilyn or not so merrily sniffing the tulips so that they can be taken into the house to you know to decorate her house there's definite parallels between the two other flowers then we're nearly at the end here it's nice pictures for you so and just to walk word of warning there are loads more in the novel I've just just picked out a few I've actually one of the pictures does actually talk about lilies here so seeds and flowers represent life and fertility and actually they usually give given in love that that's something that's now lacking in gilead love is not needed in the Gilly ad and sort of regime what what is actually needed is procreation today is the act without the love so flowers in Gilead are often carrot by fading or by violence so we've got the blue iris which is the the blue one that's London the second one down so not the top now this comes from a picture in the house which that off red comments on and she says it's symbolic faith and hope sorry no she didn't say that for an iris is the symbol of faith and hope Ashley echoes of the cushion setting off Fred's room she has the cushion that still says faith and it comes from 1 Corinthians 13 in the Bible where and I'll paraphrase this because I'm with it with me but the idea that the Apostle Paul says there are these three things that remain faith hope and love but the greatest of these still remains and that is love now ironically offered cushion in in her room is probably and the remains of one of three from the time before faith hope and love but hope and love have been lost because they're not important to the regime anymore what is important is having faith in it but faith doesn't always include without faith without love is hollow now what you've got here is the blue iris is symbolic of faith and hope but we've lost one of those elements okay so the quotation from the book is on the wall above the chair a picture framed but with no glass a print of flowers blue irises watercolor fairly matter-of-factly reported the irony there again of the idea of no glass of course there's not gonna be glass because glass is dangerous people can kill themselves with shattered glass the blue of the flowers here for the blue iris is perhaps echoic of the wives faith is gone so the hope is gone it's just faith that remains now we have another blue flower which is the small ones at the top there the bathroom is decorated in small blue flowers forget-me-nots with curtains to match now I look this up then forget-me-nots so symbolic of true love maybe you throw back to the past these instant incidences where you've got flowers so this I get the idea that this wallpaper is quite faded it's a throwback to past times and it's part of this idea of the palimpsest of the novel you know we're in old times has been erased a palimpsest was an old manuscript where they they they rubbed out what was on it and then wrote over the the rubbing out a new document because manuscript and parchment was very expensive so they didn't remake them they just reuse them but in on these images on these these manuscripts the old time the old discourse narrative would often if you held it up to the light you'd be able to see it you'll see kind of glimmers of it and we get that in how maids tale with the time before maybe this is another example of the Palin's fest where the time for leaks through into the present bit of an irony here because actually how minds are constantly asked to forget the time before and aunt Lydia makes it very clear that if I forget it it'll be easier on them and in fact she says the next generation of Hamlet's will find it even easier again because they won't know what the past was like that would have been totally raised finally we've got I think these appear in Sarina Joy's garden again there's the bleeding heart of the image there at the bottom again dripping flowers suggestive again of this kind of misery that we saw with their weeping willow and the weeping catkins that we've we had in the description before but the irony here and there is a there is a story there's a kind of a Greek myth about the hearts having been captured and kept on here but the idea if you look at the flower itself the bleeding heart there is it does look like the heart is bleeding so the obvious symbolism there of love that's lost or unrequited love which obviously we see with Luke with off Reds [Music] attempt to remember and to keep hold of her memories of Luke which seem to be bleeding the final one is I've not got a written description of that but you can see there the lilies and I wanted to just put a picture of the lily on there because you can see very clearly the middle bit the like seats in the middle there well that's actually the pollen of a lily and if you keep them in the house if you if somebody if you're lucky to have them bought for you those middle sections those stamens are actually they smell really strongly but they also stained so a lot of people cut them out if you cut them out it reduces the kind of beauty of the flower that said these are the reproductive parts of the flower so I think perhaps one of the reasons why the lily was represented here and it's represented a couple of times in the novel is because those reproductive parts of the flower are really really clear in this and once it opens are from the bees can get in and they can pollinate other flowers it makes the whole process very sort of visual I suppose okay so that is the end of my lecture there there's plenty more symbolism you can look up on the internet but that hopefully gives you a sort of a starting point and some interesting notes to take thank you