Yes, in most cases symbolism is reader interaction. There are nowhere near as many works written with deliberate symbolism. It's not really a common deliberate written tool.

The problem is that there's plenty of readers who are obsessed with symbolism. Great for the book club discussion or whatever, but then when someone starts to conjure up wild symbolism in everything it gets tiresome to hear. When a teacher forces you to do so, well... that's exactly why there's so many stories about "that damn teacher obsessed with symbolism".

Anyway it would be great if the people obsessed with symbolism also realized that in the overwhelming majority of writing all that "symbolism" is simply what the story meant to them. Not some hidden, clever meaning that they should devote boundless energy towards ensuring that everyone else clearly "sees correctly". Seems like it should take way less effort to realize how annoying that could get, lol.

There's a reason why so much of the push behind new vaping laws and anti-vaping commercial campaigns is from the tobacco industry themselves. Now why would they be behind the push. Hmmmm... they don't like people getting off of cigarettes.