Bright, fiery shades of orange are beautiful in their own right. However, in the literary world, they take on a new kind of beauty. Just as it does in the real world, orange commands attention when it appears on the page.
When orange appears in a piece of literature, it’s almost never by accident. Skilled writers choose the words they use carefully. Orange is bright and loud (even when it only appears through figurative language), so when it appears in a poem, novel, or short story, it usually symbolizes an important theme or idea. Today, we’ll take a look at the symbolism of orange in both poetry and prose.
Orange Symbolism in Poetry
Poetry is a genre full of symbolism, including color symbolism. But when you think about the colors used symbolically in poetry, your mind might not immediately jump to orange. Using a deep blue lake to represent tranquility or red to stand for love are both commonplace. But what does orange symbolize? As we’ll see in a moment, this vibrant color can symbolize a wide variety of things.
“The Orange Alert” by Douglas Kearney (2006)
The contemporary poem “The Orange Alert” takes us to beautiful but fire-prone California. There are a few layers of symbolism here — read it several times, and you’ll discover a new nuance on each read-through.
“Orange” is clearly used as a shorthand for fire in this poem. But as is the case with many poems, the subtext doesn’t stop at just this layer. Parts of the poem deal with fire in a very literal sense, but that fire becomes a symbol of death, poverty, illness, or any of the endless things we’re afraid of. In this sense, fear of an impending wildfire is analogous to the sense of foreboding we get when disaster is on the metaphorical horizon.
The best illustration of this subtext comes in the form of an image that appears twice in the poem. In the second stanza, we learn that the orange alert has to do with fire: “We’ve known/the orange alert, fires reaching for helicopters/like cartoon cats clawing at panicked birds.”
The description of the flames is a memorable one — the mention of the cartoon cats makes it almost comical. However, when we learn the height of the flames (they’re high enough to reach for helicopters) and see the comparison of helicopters (and by extension, the people within them) to “panicked birds,” the gravity of the situation becomes clear.
That image is echoed in the last lines of the poem: “the smog went orange with dusk, the growing shadows/of lingering birds.” Although the fire hasn’t happened yet, the orange smog recalls the tall flames mentioned above, and the shadows of birds are reminiscent of the helicopters.
A poem about fire is very seldom just a poem about fire. But what does fire symbolize here? That’s up to interpretation, but there’s an insinuation that the wealthy will be better protected from its ravages:
Altadena, smog hugs the foothills like mustard gas
where our rich peer through their blinds
into ravines, Santa Anas sway the mustard plants, yuccas
bob, some man—his cigarette,
a full gas-can, an itch.
Even in these few short lines, we see that the outdoors is full of hazards. However, the rich remain well-protected indoors. The firemen, neighborhood kids, and presumably most other people are outdoors and relatively unprotected from the often cruel realities of everyday life.
“Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou (1983)
“Caged Bird” might just be the most famous poem by iconic poet Maya Angelou. It’s reminiscent of the title of her 1969 autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The poem contrasts the life of a free-flying bird with the life of a bird confined to a cage. It’s an image (or more accurately, an extended metaphor) rife with subtext.
To grasp that subtext, you need to have a basic understanding of Angelou’s work. Much of her writing focuses on racism and other injustices faced by Black Americans. In this poem, the free bird is a symbol of Americans who don’t face the same injustices as the Black community. It begins with a glimpse into the charmed life of the free bird:
A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky.
Orange only appears briefly here, but it carries a lot of symbolic weight. Orange is a color commonly associated with joy, creativity, and adventure — all things that can be associated with freedom. The bird doesn’t just witness this joyful abundance of color. He dips his wing into it, implying that there’s a significant amount of that joy, creativity, and abundance to be had — enough to create a deep pool.
When you reach the poem’s depiction of the caged bird, you might notice that there isn’t a single color mentioned. That detail might be a subtle one, but it highlights the divide between the beautiful, colorful life of the free bird and the bleak life of the caged bird.
“Oranges” by Gary Soto (1983)
The famous poem “Oranges” might seem familiar. That’s because it often appears in anthologies of poetry and even schoolbooks. It’s evocative and brimming with subtext, but it manages to stay relatable. “Oranges” is a poem with a real sense of balance. It contrasts the bright, vivid colors of the titular oranges with the gray darkness of a December day. It doesn’t stop there, though — it also balances the cold of the outdoors with warmth (both literal and figurative).
The oranges are a very effective symbol of that warmth. The first illustration of warmth comes when the narrator (who is on his first date) realizes he doesn’t have the money to buy the chocolate the girl picks out at the drugstore. The chocolate costs a dime, and he only has two oranges and a nickel in his pocket. In an attempt to save face, he places the nickel and an orange on the counter. The woman working behind the counter sees what’s going on, and she wordlessly accepts the payment. The warm color of the orange symbolizes the warmth of human connection that glimmers, however briefly, between them.
Of course, this is a poem about a first date, so naturally, there needs to be some connection between the boy and the girl. We get a symbol of that connection in the striking image seen at the end:
I peeled my orange That was so bright against The gray of December That, from some distance, Someone might have thought I was making a fire in my hands
Just as the speaker’s first date is a bright spot in his life, the bright orange seems to glow against the dark winter backdrop. Notably, in this stanza, we don’t only see the color contrast — we also get the sense of warmth the color inspires.
“Notes on Orange” by Jennifer Huang (2022)
The wonderfully memorable contemporary poem “Notes on Orange” makes symbolic use of both the color orange and the orange fruit, much like “Oranges” does. It’s part history lesson, part meditation on orange (and what it symbolizes).
Soon after the poem begins, we see a quote that gives orange an almost celestial feel. It’s an actual quote from Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky that defines orange as “red brought nearer to humanity by yellow.” Our speaker then hypothesizes that orange might just be “the true opposite of human.” She goes into an evocative list of this shade’s associations:
A piece of sun, its properties have been known to help us recall the feeling of cool-blue grass under toes, the chime of a baby robin, the holy scent of ripe mud. What is it that makes us want to get close? To the gods, to summer, to sweetness, before we retreat again
This stanza is a surprising one. The things the speaker connects orange to aren’t necessarily warm (cool-blue grass is the opposite), but they nonetheless inspire the kind of warm feeling you get when you revisit a fond memory. In this poem, orange becomes a symbol of any object of yearning — what every human wants but cannot reach.
When you think about it, orange might be the perfect color to represent whatever it is you want to get close to. This warm shade inspires a sense of joy and energy. Kandinsky might have imagined orange merely as the result of yellow pulling red downward. But in the context of the poem, orange is a color that combines the best of both “parent colors” — it takes the passion and intensity of red and unites it with the pure energy of yellow.
Orange Symbolism in Prose
As it turns out, orange is a pretty versatile color when it comes to figurative language. However, orange symbolism isn’t unique to poetry. Splashes of this vibrant color grace the pages of novels and the paragraphs of short stories. It even pops up in graphic novels! Let’s take a look at how orange can add life to any kind of prose.
“Only Orange” by Camille Bordas (2019)
“Only Orange” was first published in The New Yorker. It’s one of those stories that seems ostensibly simple — it follows a family vacation/reunion in Spain and is told from the point of view of the very cynical Jeanne. However, it includes layers of subtext. As you’d guess from the name, orange appears a handful of times, but its symbolic meaning is less than clear.
There’s only one instance where the story lingers on orange. It’s when Jeanne’s parents are explaining the world of normal color to Audrey (their son’s significant other), who has just discovered she’s color-blind:
“Why, Audrey, this is orange,” my father would say, and he’d describe orange, trapped between yellow and red—he’d talk about sunsets, the fruit, quote Henri Bergson, tell her that maybe orange was the only color there was, in the end: “There’s just so much to say about orange. I’d never really thought about it.”
The Henri Bergson mentioned in the quote is a French philosopher. Bergson, when explaining his philosophy of intuition, asks the reader to assume for a moment that there is no color other than orange. So what does this passage mean?
In Bergsonian intuition, you develop sympathy for others by effectively sympathizing with yourself. And in order to sympathize with yourself, you need to enter into yourself. Bergson believed that if you could (metaphorically) enter into someone or something, you could gain absolute knowledge.
Here’s where orange comes in. When Bergson asks readers to imagine orange is the only color, he’s asking them to “sympathize” with it — to put themselves in its place and gain absolute knowledge of it.
If you’re in orange’s place and you know everything about it, you know that it’s made of red and yellow. Since you’re one with the color orange, you see that its darkest shades come close to red, and its lighter shades approach the shade of yellow. So by stepping into orange, you gain a sense of the broader color spectrum.
In creative writing (and especially in shorter pieces), the title often serves as a guide to interpretation (or at the very least, it points you in the right direction). “Only Orange” might seem like an unusual title, but it’s a reference to the Henri Bergson quote mentioned above.
While Audrey’s (alleged) color-blindness doesn’t lead to her experiencing the world as mostly orange, it does make her see the world as an almost monochromatic wash of green. Jeanne is a kind of foil for Audrey. Even though she has normal color vision, Jeanne’s outlook on the world is metaphorically monochromatic. Her cynicism often descends into sulkiness, and she harbors a palpable resentment of her family and of Audrey.
If Jeanne were to “enter into” herself or into her (metaphorically) all-orange worldview, as Bergman suggests, she would be able to sympathize with herself and the people around her. However, as you can see throughout the story, Jeanne doesn’t make an effort to sympathize with or understand Audrey.
Jeanne thinks Audrey is lucky to have been an orphan, and she thinks Audrey just fakes being colorblind. She doesn’t seem to want to understand what her brother and her parents see in Audrey, and she also doesn’t seem to want to examine her own hostility and clear unhappiness with life.
Jeanne’s outlook on life and disinterest in understanding other people make her existence an isolated and unhappy one. That fact is underscored by the story’s final image. Jeanne’s brother starts sketching the family, and Jeanne moves so she won’t be included. As the sketch begins, Jeanne’s brother gives each family member a vague shape.
The shapes are touching — an illustration of her family’s togetherness. But to Jeanne, that closeness isn’t anything she wants. In the final, subtext-laden line, she observes that “he thought that the way the family had arranged itself made for an elegant composition, triangles overlapping, or something.”
“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon (2000)
“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” is a novel that won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It’s set in 1939, and it focuses on protagonists Sammy Klayman and his cousin Josef “Joe” Kavalier. Joe escapes Nazi-occupied Prague to live in New York City with his cousin. Together, the two begin working with a company that produces comics.
However, the novel isn’t just about comics. Joe stays committed to helping his family escape the clutches of the Nazis, and Sammy works to advance his career while also struggling with his sexual identity.
As you’d expect from a Pulitzer-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is rife with symbolism. Some of that symbolism revolves around orange — both the color and the fruit.
The most powerful orange symbolism in the novel comes when Joe, a Jewish refugee from Prague, is on the subway. He’s worrying for his family’s safety and reflecting on the injustices they’re facing in Prague: their bank accounts have been frozen, they can’t be in railway cars for sleeping or dining, they’ve been banished from all public parks, and they cannot wear hats or carry knapsacks. They’re also forbidden from eating onions, garlic, cheese, carp, or apples.
As he reflects on all of this, Joe pulls an orange from his pocket. The orange was given to him by Anapol, his boss at the comics company where he works:
Joe reached into his pocket and took out the orange that Anapol had given him. It was big and smooth and perfectly spherical, and oranger than anything Joe had ever seen. No doubt it would have seemed a prodigy in Prague, monstrous and illicit. He held it to his nose and inhaled, trying to find some kind of cheer or comfort in the bright volatile oils of its skin. But instead, he felt only panic.
In the grand scheme of things, this passage makes up a small portion of the novel — The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is 704 pages long! However, this brief passage is full of symbolism.
The orange is bright, beautiful, and sweet-smelling, and it’s given to Joe by the head of the comic company that has brought him prosperity. The orange then becomes a symbol of Joe’s safe, successful life in America.
However, although he admires the fruit’s beauty for a moment, Joe’s mind drifts back to his family in Prague: “No doubt [the orange] would have seemed a prodigy in Prague, monstrous and illicit.”
We’ve already seen that in Prague, Joe’s family is forbidden from eating even ordinary foods like apples, so eating (or even seeing) an orange would be utterly unheard of. But why “monstrous and illicit”? This turn of phrase shows us that Joe is feeling guilty about his success compared to his family’s suffering.
That meaning becomes clearer in the following sentences. Joe can’t feel any kind of joy from its vivid color or citrusy scent. Instead, he has a deep sense of panic about his family’s fate. His guilt and worry are so strong that, at least in this moment, he’s unable to enjoy his own success.
“Farewell, My Orange” by Iwaki Kei (2018)
“Farewell, My Orange” tells the story of Salimah, a Nigerian immigrant who now resides in Australia. Unlike some of the books on our list, this one’s symbolic use of orange is refreshingly clear. It includes some truly exquisite descriptions, too:
Watching the sun slowly rising into the ultramarine sky, its orange tinge spreading, the trapped, despairing feeling that had been haunting her suddenly lifted. […] The orange seemed almost to drip fresh and sweet from deep within the slightly oval disc of the sun, to comfort her.
Instead of using the color orange in several symbolic vignettes, Farewell, My Orange uses the color as more of an overarching symbol. Throughout the book, orange is a color that’s a source of comfort for Salimah.
Why? She’s very aware of the fact that no matter where she is in the world, she sees the same orange sun rising and setting. When everything around her seems foreign, Salimah sees that orange sun as a reassuring reminder of home.
Of course, this isn’t the only solace Salimah finds. She meets and befriends Sayuri, a native of Japan who has moved to Australia with her husband. Together, the two navigate their new homeland and the various challenges life throws their way.
“Flung Out of Space” by Grace Ellis and Hannah Templer (2022)
“Flung Out of Space” is different from the other novels on the list. This one is a graphic novel that tells a fictionalized biography of renowned author Patricia Highsmith. It’s an interesting medium — there’s enough dialogue present that the story is told through both words and pictures.
Color is also a key part of the story. The illustrations are primarily black and white, with an occasional burst of orange. That’s not an accident. In an interview, author Grace Ellis said she got the idea while flipping through a vintage handbook. She showed the color to illustrator Hannah Templer, and both agreed that it was the perfect color for the project.
Why orange? The color is authentically vintage, and Highsmith was born in the 1920s. But orange is also an attention-grabbing color, so it can be used to draw the reader’s eye toward important elements of the story.
For example, the main character (a fictionalized version of the young Patricia Highsmith) has a job at a retail store. When she meets the woman who inspires her to write her book The Price of Salt, the woman is shown against a bright, sherbet-orange backdrop.
Later, when Patricia’s first novel, Strangers on a Train, is published, she gets a box of several copies of the book. An illustration shows her opening the box in her apartment, and the books are a vivid tangerine orange against a backdrop of neutrals and near-neutrals.
The use of the color orange throughout the graphic novel adds depth and character. It’s hard to incorporate subtext into a book that’s mostly pictures, but by using orange both sparingly and deliberately, the authors are able to add weight to certain elements and highlight people and objects that will play an important role in the pages to come.
Where Will You Find Orange Next?
Orange is a color that makes a statement wherever it goes. That can be a good quality, but just as interior designers do, writers must treat orange with caution. The next time you pick up a book or read something online, keep an eye out for orange. Anywhere this color appears, rich symbolism is sure to follow!
Continue exploring and discover what all the other colors mean in literature.
