Homework Help!!!

[USMACandidate]

Ok so I am reading raisin in the sun and I have to identify various symbols in the book. I have to give the function and figurative meaning of each as well. The only problem is I dont know the difference between function of a symbol and the figurative meaning? Please can someone clarify this for me?

 

[Eagle 1]

I started writing and tried to answer, but couldn't really explain it. Then I looked online for an answer, and still no go. I did find this on SparkNotes however, and while I still can't find the words to explain it, what's in red I deem to be the function and blue the figurative meaning.

I'm taking the second of two symbols they provide on this page
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/raisin/themes.html

Beneatha’s Hair

When the play begins, Beneatha has straightened hair. Midway through the play, after Asagai visits her and questions her hairstyle, she cuts her Caucasian-seeming hair. Her new, radical afro represents her embracing of her heritage. Beneatha’s cutting of her hair is a very powerful social statement, as she symbolically declares that natural is beautiful, prefiguring the 1960s cultural credo that black is beautiful. Rather than force her hair to conform to the style society dictates, Beneatha opts for a style that enables her to more easily reconcile her identity and her culture. Beneatha’s new hair is a symbol of her anti-assimilationist beliefs as well as her desire to shape her identity by looking back to her roots in Africa.

Now I'm going to put it straight out there - I'm really not sure. I've never heard of the function and figurative meaning of a symbol, but that's how I'm interpreting it. I'd suggest just asking the teacher what he/she means (and if it's for summer reading/teacher isn't available, see what your friends are doing and just do the best you can - explain you didn't really understand the difference when school starts).

 

[AF6872]

The functional meaning of a passage is the literal meaning. "I jumped off the top at Yosemite Falls" in the functional meaning you jumped off and were dashed to bits on the rocks below. In the figurative "I jumped off the top at Yosemite Falls" you may have, intoxicated by the awesome beauty from 2,500 ft above the valley floor, made a life altering decision at the top of the trail and then hiked down to your campsite and proposed to your future bride. The cutting is the functional and the symbolism of the cutting and what it represents is the figurative. IMHO God save us from the Internet and literature in combination. They are not both symbols. One is the actual act a "symbol" signifying a deeper meaning and the functional becomes figurative in the narative.

 

[Pima]

You are new to this site, and only a sophomore in hs. I know this is the off topic forum, but you would probably get more assistance at www.collegeconfidential.com under the HS forums for homework help.

 

[AF6872]

Like I said!! Literature and the Internet doesn't mix.