The Eiffel Tower article by Roland Barthes brought an array of information about the Eiffel Tower to my attention. A lot of interesting aspects of the tower that I had never thought about before. I have always associated the Eiffel Tower with Paris and vise versa and within this article Barthes points out that the Tower is a universal symbol of paris, everyone everywhere knows of the Tower, what it looks like and where it is. It is a "universal language of travel". A kind of fun fact that he mentioned about the symbol of the tower is that it can also represent other symbols and one of those that he brought up was of a phallic symbol which is kind of odd but makes sense especially because the Tower appeals to our imaginations and fantasies, as well as it is even mythical. This Tower is full of myth as well as carries so much history within it which I found interesting, how much history one single monument can hold.
I also found it interesting that such a glorified monument was once thought of as useless, even before it was built. And that even now it still is "useless", an "empty sign" and that as Barthes stated is nothing, it serves no purpose really. The fact that it is empty and that there is nothing inside to see but the fact that we still visit it, celebrate, and admire it is fascinating because we want to participate in the dream of what it us,
"The Tower can live on itself"
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