In simple terms, stairs are structures built to bridge a vertical distance between higher and lower levels. It divides this big gap into smaller spaces through a series of horizontal platforms called steps, arranged diagonally to enable easy passage.
Its appearance and purpose are synonymous with levels and layers. As such, stairs are a symbolic representation of these concepts and the idea of ascent and descent.
Over the years, they have also gained powerful meanings in several cultures, which extend beyond their functionality.
What Does A Flight Of Stairs Symbolize?
From ancient traditions to pop culture, stairs have played various roles, such as a religious emblem or a status symbol. Here are the different meanings and symbolisms that have been linked with stairs over time:
1. Connecting Heaven And Earth
Stairs have been used by mankind since the early Stone Age, but the first aesthetically designed stairs were built around 10,000 BC as part of the Göbekli Tepe in Turkey.
This archeological pre-historic site is known for its tiered temple towers that are accessible only via a steep staircase. Other famous religious archeological sites, such as the Chichén Itzá or El Castillo pyramid in Mexico built by the Mayan civilization, also make use of steep stairs reaching up to the sky.
Through these significant pieces of architecture, stairs have been seen as the link between heaven and earth. Because of this symbolism, stairs were mainly used in sacred and important buildings during ancient times.
While they are now a common sight at present, this symbolism has been carried over in pop culture, such as the famous song from the rock band Led Zeppelin, entitled “Stairway to Heaven”.
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2. Challenges And Roadblocks
It can be challenging to climb stairs, especially steeply inclined ones or those with too many steps, before reaching the peak.
In general, the higher the staircase is, the harder it is to complete it, and you may even need to take one or two breaks in between. This experience is a direct metaphor for life. While a staircase always leads somewhere and thus represents your goal or destination, the journey will not always be smooth or fast.
You need to take each step with care and conviction, careful not to fall and start back at the beginning. At the end of the staircase, there is also a sense of accomplishment for going through all that and reaching the top.
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3. Life Path Or Stages
Each step in a staircase can also represent the different stages in your life.
Like how you use a staircase, your path in life is not always going upwards. You need to go through ups and downs, and these experiences help you grow as a person. As such, visual arts have used stairs to communicate this symbolic journey through life. One example is the movie The Great Gatsby, where the staircase represents the characters’ past, present, and future.
When Gatsby, the main character, looks back from the top of the stairs, he sees a past he wants to forget. Meanwhile, when the secondary character, Nick, looks up at Gatsby and Daisy from the bottom of the stairs, he sees a future that he longs to have.
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4. Path To Knowledge
In works of art and literature, stairs have been used to signify a person’s path toward higher knowledge.
It also helps to visualize the journey that one must take to achieve one’s goals, including the challenges and increasing difficulty that comes with it. An example is the novel Mrs. Dalloway by author Virginia Woolf, published in 1925, which has a staircase scene that represents the main character’s life journey.
The act of climbing has often been used as a metaphor to represent the growth of human knowledge and the progress towards scientific progress. Reaching the top means getting a broader and clearer view of the world and a better understanding of one’s environment or circumstances.
5. New Beginnings
Stairs are typically perceived as a means to climb to new heights or move up in the world.
Someone standing at the bottom of a staircase would often look to the top and see the peak as the culmination of his goals and aspirations.
As such, climbing up a staircase could indicate the start of a new journey or the beginning of a fresh chapter in your life. It signifies transition and change at a personal level or an indicator of your progress on your way to reaching new heights.
6. Financial Status And Material Growth
The upward or downward path of staircases is also symbolic of worldly gains, successes, or failures.
This is why the metaphor “climbing up the stairs” is often used as a visual representation of leveling up or achieving a better status in life.
In business, the steps on a staircase represent the building blocks that lead a company to its significant accomplishments. The staircase signifies sequential growth, while the steps are the skills, capabilities, experiences, and opportunities taken to bring the company to its peak.
7. Enlightenment And Higher Consciousness
Walking up the stairs can be seen as an effort to reach a higher level of consciousness or awareness.
In the Hindu religion, the upstairs climb in a temple is symbolic of spiritual ascension or spiritual enlightenment. At the same time, the steps represent the individual stages you must go through to reach this goal.
In the film the Truman Show, a staircase is used in the final scene to illustrate the main character’s epiphany, a realization of his identity as a character in a play. This scene showed him ascending the stairs to what seems to be the afterlife, with the staircase ending up in a door leading to a new world beyond the confines of the story he grew up in.
8. Duality And Contradiction
A flight of stairs can be used both ways – going up or down, without making any changes in its structure.
At the same time, it is easily accessible and even offers convenience for able-bodied people, but it presents a big hurdle for people with disabilities. Thus, it can be both a passage facilitator and a passage barrier at the same time.
Because of these factors, stairs have also become a symbol of duality and contradiction. Even the language used about stairs has opposite effects or meanings, such as ascent and descent. Visually, staircases can be an object of grandeur and elegance or something that inspires fear and horror, and it has been used both in films and art pieces.
9. Death, Birth, And Resurrection
As the staircase signifies your life journey, its end symbolizes your life’s starting and ending points.
The bottom of the stairs represents your birth and the start of your life’s journey, while the last step stands for your death or the end of your journey. Each step in between symbolizes your experiences or the specific events in your life.
Where the road leads after you reach the top depends on your own faith and beliefs. For some, their life ends with death, while others believe in the afterlife or resurrection. In a sense, the end of the staircase can represent a gateway to another world or a way to depart from this world for good.
10. Power And Might
From a visual perspective, someone standing at the top of the stairs would seem taller, mightier, and more imposing.
They are standing in a superior position and looking down at those below them. With this, it can be deduced that those at the top of the stairs are deemed powerful, while those at the bottom are seen as struggling. As the staircase separates those with power from those without, it can also symbolize the divide between socio-economic classes.
This was evident in the Baroque times, where people of higher social status would build opulent and extravagant staircases to show off their influence. One example is the staircase at the Würzburg Residenz, designed by the famous architect Balthasar Neumann.
Conclusion
Stairs allow ease of passage from one level to another, but at the same time, they can also serve as a roadblock for people with physical disabilities. As such, stairs can symbolize your life journey along with its challenges.
At the same time, it also represents the duality and contradiction of being an enabler and a deterrent without changing its structure.
Aside from this, stairs represent birth and death, which everyone has to go through. Depending on your beliefs, however, the end of the stairs can mean the start of a new life, such as rebirth or resurrection.
It can also symbolize the path to enlightenment and the challenges one must go through to grow and improve.
I’m Chris and I run this website – a resource about symbolism, metaphors, idioms, and a whole lot more! Thanks for dropping by.