Weather is an important part of the
setting in literature. It not only sets the mood, but it can also reflect parts
of the characters. Foster mentions the use of fog to signal confusion, such as
the fog in Party Going by Henry
Green. Rain is also mentioned by Foster. Rain, in the Bible, represents many
different situations, the most famous of which is the story of Noah and the
flood. God flooded the earth to cleanse the world of sin, but told Noah to build
an ark and to put two of each animal on it. Rain can represent cleansing of the
soul or can represent being more stained by the mud the rain creates.
In literature I have read, weather
has not been so much of a big deal that I have noticed. But I was not paying so
much attention to the weather. In scary stories, the night is always dark and
chilly. Ghosts are told to suck the energy from the air to manifest, making the
air around them cold. The chilly night is almost foreshadowing for the ghostly
encounter the main character will soon have. In the Divergent series, Tris discusses her love of rain. She loves the
smell of the wet concrete when it rains. Her allusion to her love of rain could
be her desperate need for forgiveness for the deaths she caused during the war.
She wants to be cleansed of her guilt, so she seeks rain so she can be
forgiven.
You have a really interesting point of view on this prompt; I like how you focused on how weather can be so symbolic. Some aspects of weather, such as rain, can imply a lot of different meanings. In my post, I focused on the more gloomy aspect of rain with storms, but you also brought in how rain can be cleansing, and how this symbol goes as far back and as deep as to the Bible. I, like you, usually do not think weather plays a huge role in the books I read, but this is mostly because we have become so used to the implications of weather, such as the dark and chilly nights in scary stories.
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