: Re: Using a town to symbolize/represent a character within a story (fiction)? I'm not sure if this has been done before. In my story, the main character's wife takes the form of a town. The town

@Cugini967

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It's not clear from your description what the intended genre of your story is, but I suspect that this will have a major impact on how you approach this. If the genre is fantasy or horror, then you can have the city embody your protag's wife in a much more literal or fantastic way than you could in other genres, which opens up interesting possibilities.

In fact, your description of the town's characteristics make me think of horror, which in turn makes me think of the video game classic Silent Hill 2. In this game, the protag has come to an isolated mountain town after the death of his wife of a long illness. But he finds the town mostly empty of people but filled with monsters and decay. The types of monsters he confronts, the few people that he meets, and the nightmarish, decaying locations that he has to visit all manifest elements of his experience with his wife's illness and death. The cumulative effect is extremely disturbing, and the symbolic content of the monsters and environment is actually more upsetting than the literal danger, as the monsters are relatively few and easy to kill by video game standards.

It sounds like you can do something very familiar, even if your story has a more mundane setting. The things that you mentioned above are a very good place to start. Some additional things you might add include the following:

Religious references, even if your character isn't religious. Anyone familiar with Western culture should be able to understand the significance of a defaced statue of the Virgin Mary, for example. This may present a good avenue for introducing the theme of infidelity.
Weather and environment. This doesn't have to mean "dark and gloomy" either---a bright, merciless sun can be used for horror or discomfort just as well as a dark alley.
Particular buildings with significance. If your character's wife has miscarried, for example perhaps he has to visit a hospital or an abandoned school.

One last thing is to note that your symbols shouldn't really be about the wife as she exists, but about your protagonists feelings about his wife. For example, don't try to think of ways to represent the wife's infidelity itself, but rather your protagonists fear of his wife's infidelity. The latter is a much darker, more powerful, and more versatile image.

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