The word “effigy” in literature is most often deployed as a tangible stand-in for abstract ideas or as a symbol loaded with cultural and political meaning. Authors use it to evoke the ritualistic mourning of figures or gods, as when an effigy is buried amid somber rites [1], or to convey acts of public dissent, seen in portrayals of individuals burned in effigy to express communal disapproval [2, 3]. In other contexts, effigies serve as surrogate embodiments of persons—ranging from the knightly form of a tomb monument [4, 5] to figures used in magical or sacrificial rites that transfer misfortune or invoke ancestral spirits [6, 7, 8]. Through these diverse applications, literature harnesses the power of an effigy to concretize the intangible, infusing narrative with layers of symbolic resonance and social commentary.