The focal point of the paper is to determine and evaluate symbolism and figures of speech for a short story: A Secret Lost in the Water by Roch Carrier, translated by Sheila Fischman from French. It is true that a short story like this, requires a lot of control on the part of the writer, and the writer controlled the entire narration with elements of several symbolisms and figures of speech to make the story attractive and meaningful. The writer used the symbolism of the spring, the farmer, and the cameras/producer to make the readers successfully understand her views.
The spring itself is symbolic of ancient knowledge acquired by our ancestors that the present generations are slowly forgetting. The spring also stands for nature and the eco-friendly knowledge the ancient people used to harness its fruits. On the other hand, the cameras and the film producer symbolizes the nature of modernization who are willing to capture the present situation in films but are not interested in the knowledge gained by the ancestors. Similarly, the farmer represents or symbolizes the inner soul of the human self who feels guilty, as he knows that it is a crime that the modern generation has forgotten the precious knowledge of eco-friendly methods of using nature.
The farmer also symbolizes the truth that it is foolish to run after technology and modernism in a blindfolded race. By doing so, the senses developed by the human mind over the years are lost as there is no direct contact with nature, and when those senses are required the human tries to replace those senses with technology. However, by that time, it becomes too late and the technology is found to be unsuitable for the job. Thus, the entire symbolism of the story states that human being is loosing its hard-earned knowledge as he is relying too much on technology and less on senses.
There is a lot of use of different figures of speech in the story. The author has used the figure of speech like similes, paradox, personification, and hyperbole to make the story descriptive and interesting. There is not much use of paradox present in the story. One such use of this figure of speech is ‘a man can get along without writing and arithmetic but he can never get along without water’. This part is interesting because according to the speaker arithmetic and writing are less important than water but people always overlook the knowledge of water and chose arithmetic and writing. Apart from this, the most interesting hyperbole present is the “enough water to feed your flock“. The same use of a figure of speech can also be taken into account as good use of the pun in the story and there is a good amount of humor in this hyperbole.
Other than this, the writer used similes like “frightened snake” to describe an entire scene of a trembling branch with minimum use of words. There are also other similes where this use of the figure of speech is present with great effect. One such incident is “sounds like a river”. Alongside, there is two distinctive use of personification in the story. The first one is the inclusion of farmers. The farmer is the personification of ancient knowledge. The second one is the narrator himself. He is the personification of the modern generation. Thus, it is seen that the proper use of these two characters made the conflict between two different times very clear.