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The color yellow doesn't always mean the same thing in all books, so there is really no way to answer this question. Sometimes yellow is symbolic of happiness and light... of brightness, cheerfulness, or hope. Other times (The Yellow Wallpaper comes to mind), it is a sickly color that emphasizes illness, frailty, or age. In other books it could be purely descriptive... no deeper meaning at all. She was wearing a yellow dress, and that means nothing about her mood or her intentions. :) Yellow, if you like it, means that you are responsible and/or busy. Of course, "yellow" may also be used to refer to cowardice. To determine which of these uses the author is drawing on (and it may be more than one), you should begin by paying attention to what items the color is primarily associated with, esp. if they are ones commonly associated with the themes listed so far, e.g., 'bright and sunny' or sickly or aged. In other words, do not just look for the meaning of the color abstractly, but for key objects with that color that feature prominently in the story. Or perhaps you are thinking not of literary symbolism but to "yellow-covered literature". This term, and related expressions, originated in ante-bellum America, to refer to cheap, sensational and very popular novels ("dime novels")and magazines, often bound in striking or unusual colors. In the late 1890s the term "yellow journalism" appeared. This term is a contraction of "Yellow Kid journalism", named for the lead character in Cartoons appearing in Pulitzer and Hearst newspapers, and used to refer to the sensational stories in these cheap papers. But given the similarity of content, the shortened expression may have been partly inspired or assisted by the earlier expression.

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16y ago

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