I tend to have an active mind towards it because I feel it enriches the experience. But there are a lot of kings of symbolism and some are likely to only appear upon a reread (or a scouring of secondary text).

In my opinion, what tends to make for good symbolism is some or all of the following:

> 1) Agency in the symbol

> 2) Generally established cultural connotations

> 3) Repetition

> 4) Appearance at crucial moments

> 5) Changes or recontextualization with each appearance

> 6) A symbol web

The more of those boxes are checked, the more evident the symbol(s). Kind of a basic example but say a character study marks a character's emotional development with a water symbol - an element with the capacity to nurture or overwhelm. They storm off during an argument and become dehydrated as a result of their actions. They leave a summer job at a community swimming pool for a dispiriting cubicle internship devoid of human connection. They offer to help an elderly neighbor repair their faucet and they earn a new friend. Then maybe a parent or another character will have a more fiery motif with a reoccurring symbol that emphasizes destruction as a loss of control or marks the forging of bonds when wielded responsibly. Something like that (as perhaps blunt as it may be) might reveal additional layers when they appear in more ambiguous ways or hint at relationships between characters or their environment.