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tbh, i don't really understand the concept of themes/symbolism in fiction books. aside from the most literal things. how much of this is just people being pretentious and/or reading tea leaves?
As a new example close to my heart, I'll say that when both people (early readers) and AIs remarked on the themes and symbolism of my new story, 90% of what they mention are a subset of what I intended. Though I'm probably more heavyhanded than litfic writers tend to be.
PS. Happy to elaborate on this if you or others need a deeper defense rather than just a sense-check! I'd benefit from understanding your concern in more words if so. I can think of several different possible senses of what someone might mean in your parent comment and imo I'm happy to defend "a lot of it is real" for all those senses but it's possible your objection is a secret fifth sense.
2CstineSublime
I don't think it is productive to conflate symbolism and themes. Symbolism is when an element of a story, or the description, correlates to some signifié. Say, "Rosebud" is a symbol of Charles Foster Kane's youth and innocence. I'm not sure if parody (or inspiration) counts as symbolism - is the protagonist of Zola's Œuvre a symbol for Paul Cézanne? I don't know.
I'm loathe to bundle themes together with symbolism. While a selection of symbols throughout a work may comprise a theme. It would be a mistake to say "themes are symbols". Not all themes need be comprised of symbols. Effective use of themes, at least in dramatic works, don't rely on symbolism, instead they make the plot events themselves dramatizations of the theme.
In Bergman's The Silence the theme is... well... silence... or perhaps more correctly: non-communication. They are strangers who don't speak the language of the country they are in. They are sisters who cannot relate to each other. They are effectively and literally silent. And when they aren't silent they aren't communicating a with a whole lot of meaning. And it is a theme essential to the plot of the film, rather than a symbolic add on. Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove has a similar theme [1]and similarly is repeated several times throughout the plot of the film.
These episodes are not symbols for anything, they are the thing itself.
And don't get me started on Zappa's Project/Object theory which proposes that they don't need to symbolize a damn thing to give a theme power!
[...]
— Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book.
Mamoru Oshii expressed a similar sentiment that it is the repetition of imagery in his films that creates meaning. [2]The theme is the fact there's a theme at all I suppose.
1. ^
In the case of Dr. Strangelove is "about Nuclear Apocalypse" - that is the subject, yes. But, as Kubrick himself said to Film critic Michel Ciment " Failure of communication is a theme which runs through a number of my films" alluding to