"The World as Will and Idea" and "Young Goodman Brown": Symbols The word symbol derives from the Greek verb symbolallein 'to throw together' and its noun symbolon 'mark, emblem, token or sign'. A symbol is an object animate or inanimate, which represents or stands for something else. A literary symbol combines an image with a concept, words themselves are a kind of symbol. In literature an example of a public or universal symbol is a journey into the underworld and a return from it. Such a journey may be an interpretation of a spiritual experience, a dark night of the soul and a kind of redemptive odyss