My question is, when building a fictional world, how can we give that world enough richness that symbols made up for that world give our readers the same sort of insights or provoke a level of understanding that is akin to waving a Confederate flag? Or, can we not really accomplish this unless our made up world becomes REAL to the reader and, perhaps, not until we're on the 5th book of our "trilogy."

I have the same kind of questions about sayings or proposed religious beliefs. In one of my stories I am striving for a combined feeling of familiarity (like "a penny saved is a penny earned") but also a certain level of "alieness" so that the reader gets some insight into the culture I'm trying to create.

Sometimes this seems easy and obvious, but at other times, the images come off more like Monty Python skits rather than something meaningful in both the "fictional world" and in the reader's world. (Remember in Life of Brian when the faithful were fighting over whether to adopt "the sandal" or "the gourd" as their standard? "Follow the sandal!!!" "NO! Follow the Gourd!!!" he he he. Anyway, that's not the effect I'm going for.

I think the closest I came to really getting this right was with a character (a priestess) of the clan whose body is basically covered in carvings depicting the history of her people and the predicted end of their times. The symbols are evocative and explicative at the same time.

The best I have done with general sayings within a culture weren't good enough so I deleted them.

I remember seeing a clip taken from this new movie, eh, can't remember the name. Anyway, in this clip, there are a bunch of marines in full battle dress crawling around on the roof of this embassy, under fairly intense light arms fire, and they're retrieving the American flag from the top of the embassy while people are trying to kill them.

And if you look at it without understanding the history of flags and their special relationship to battle and warfare, then it seems incredibly stupid. So too with the symbols that matter to the people in our stories. If we don't know why they chose that symbol and what it means, then it'll just seem stupid. In fact, there is no reason to have an embassy in the first place other than to assert national sovereignty, so it does matter if you allow the flag to be taken, because in effect you admit that you aren't willing to back your claim of sovereignty with force. It's like a bank refusing to pay its note holders, thus admitting that they really can't back their note. But if you don't know that the flag is an assertion of sovereignty backed by force of arms and patriotism, then it doesn't make any sense to risk anyone's life over it.

Symbols aren't chosen arbitrarily, but by association with pivotal events. Just as the flags used to rally an army around its command evolved into symbols of national sovereinty backed by military force, your symbols must have roots that are compelling and believable.

Of course, once you have established to yourself not only what the symbol means but how it came to mean that, you won't feel silly talking about it. And when you can write unselfconsciously about those symbols, your reader won't need a lot of explication to know that it's not just a joke.

Symbols tend to cluster in reinforcing patterns. Just as the symbolism of the Cross is informed and reinforced by the symbol of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, so the idea of the flag as the symbol or signal of a nations presence goes with the idea of the standard bearer, the hero that champions the cause of his country. Perfume and flowers, flowers and lace, lace and finely coifed hair, and so on, all are symbols of femininity and romance. I could have included the connection of a girl with flowers in her hair, to bring it full circle, but that would have left out perfume, and perfumed hair is almost prosaic to be the ultimate tie in that circle.

Anyway, a powerful symbol has a cluster of symbols around it that are related to the central symbol and to each other in ways that are both predictable and surprising. The confederate flag, for instance. We all think of the Dukes of Hazzard(sp) and the Dukes running around in their muscle cars. They are rebels that live in a glorified south, black man in his place of selfless support, handsome young white youth that defend the family honor (including that of their sister, though she can quite naturally defend it pretty well herself), wise old grandfather, bumbling and corrupt police that can't hold a candle to the good ol' boys.

The muscle cars come from the tradition of cavalry and horse racing prior to the Civil War. The police are carpetbaggers or Federals, depending on your ante/post bellum interpretive bias. The black man is a happy Uncle Tom or a marginalized sharecropper (in the confederate view, it was the mismanagement of carpet baggers that made life so hard for the sharecroppers). The Dukes are the Confederacy, a way of life better in poverty than that of the Sheriff, no matter how much money his grubbing gets him. Their lawlessness and rebellion is a rejection of the end of the Civil War, a commitment to carry on till the result is reversed and the south freed.