The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde Essay Example

with me if I brought her red roses, but in all my garden there is no red rose”.

The author portrays him as a romantic and passionate one, illustrated by “The Prince gives a ball to-morrow night,' murmured the young Student, 'and my love will be of the company. If I bring her a red rose she will dance with me till dawn. If I bring her a red rose, I shall hold her in my arms, and she will lean her head upon my shoulder, and her hand will be clasped in mine. But there is no red rose in my garden, so I shall sit lonely, and she will pass me by. She will have no heed of me, and my heart will break. In this sentence, it is just by using the word “murmur” to show the student’s feelings of grievance and helplessness. Responding to the word murmur, the word “tomorrow” may be twisted as to-morrow and the normal pronunciation of it is changed into/tu:mo rou/. Because the vowel sound/ u:/and the diphthong are usually connected with the words blue and low respectively, naturally we can imagine the student’s feelings of anxiousness, fret as well as his low spirits . He is dreaming of a near fabulous future “Her hand will be clasped in mine. ” Here, “clasp” means to hold tightly.

But why does not the author use the word “grip” or “grasp”? This word is powerful enough to express the student’s strongest passion and love to the Professor’s daughter. And the action of the word clasp is also capable of revealing the student’s eagerness as well as his

beautiful daydreaming. Because of cold weather, it is hard for the student to find a red rose for the girl, “the need of a red rose made his life wretched”. However, when the Nightingale sacrifices her precious life for his red rose, he understands nothing. Hearing the Nightingale’s song in the garden, he thinks it something meaningless and of no practical use.

So the Nightingale, impaled on a thorn of the rose-tree, sings all night long beneath the Student’s windows. At dawn she dies and her body falls into the long grass. The Student looks out and sees to his delight a red rose, which he immediately plucks and takes to the girl he loves. But the girl is quite unimpressed, declaring that the rose will not go with her dress and, anyway, she prefers the jewels given to her by the Chamberlain’s nephew “I am afraid it will not go with my dress, and, besides, the Chamberlain’s nephew has sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows that jewels costs far more than flowers”.

So the Student, disillusioned and impatient, hurls the red rose beneath the wheels of a passing carriage “Well, upon my word, you are very ungrateful”, said the Student angrily; and he threw the rose into the street, where it fell into the gutter, and a cart-wheel went over it”, then he returns to his books after realizing “What a silly thing Love is” said the Student as he walked away. “It is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and

making one believe things that are not true.

In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and study Metaphysics”. With these words, we can see that the Student is not a true lover as we expected. In fact, he is an ignorant of love, not persistent in pursuing love, and he doesn’t know the true meaning of love. Indeed, what he calls “love” is just a crush. The second character set in this tale is the Green Lizard, the Daisy and the Butterfly. They are all curious when the Student cries, and burst into laugh when the Nightingale says that he cried for a red rose.

They think that it is very ridiculous. They don’t believe in something that is so-called true love. They all are cynics, people who see little or no good in anything and who have no belief in human progress; people who show this by sneering and being contemptuous. In other words, the Green Lizard, the Daisy and the Butterfly are trivial people that don’t have trust in true love. The outstanding character of this tale is the Nightingale, a small bird with an unselfish heart, who sacrifices her own precious life for the Red Rose.

The Rose in this tale is a symbol of the true love, so the Nightingale is an emblem of the true lover, a truthful, devoted pursuer for love. She is woken up by the cry of the Student “'No red rose in all my garden! ' he cried, and his beautiful eyes filled with tears. “Ah, on what

little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched. ”, struck by the “mystery of love”. She tells to herself that the Student was a “true lover”, that he knew the true meaning of love.

She praises Love as “a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the market-place. It may not be purchased of the merchants, or can it be weighed out in the balance for gold. ” All the creatures laugh when the Student weep for a red rose, except for the Nightingale. She “understood the secret of the Student’s sorrow, and she sat silent in the oak-tree, and thought about the mystery of Love”. She goes to the greatest extremes to find a red rose for the Student to give to the Professor’s daughter.

She flies all around the garden trying to find a red rose. She flew to “the centre of the grass-plot”, and “round the old sun-dial’, and finally “beneath the Student’s window’, where she eventually finds a red rose tree. But the tree is damaged, and will not bear a red rose. The price to pay for a red rose costs much more than her sweetest song: The only way the Nightingale can obtain a red rose from this tree, will be to “build it out of music by moonlight”, and stain it with her “own heart’s-blood. ” The Nightingale thinks much about

the price to pay for the red rose.

The price is very costly: the red rose is worth the Nightingale’s precious life, besides, the process of obtaining the red rose is painful: she has to sing all night long with her breast against the thorn, under the cold crystal Moon. The Nightingale understood how terrible the price is, but she accepts “Death is a great price to pay for a red rose, and Life is very dear to all. It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and to watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl.

Sweet is the scent of the hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and the heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man? ” Life is awesome, but Love is worth much more than Life; and the Nightingale decides to sacrifice herself for Love. A few paragraphs before these lines the Nightingale sings to the Student telling him of how she intends to sacrifice her life for him “Be happy; you shall have your red rose.

I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart’s-blood. ” Oscar Wilde uses climax and inversion to describe the process in which the Nightingale exchanges her own life for the red rose. She sings her last song “when the Moon shone in the heavens the Nightingale flew to the Rose-tree, and set her breast against the thorn. All night long

she sang with her breast against the thorn, and the cold crystal Moon leaned down and listened.

All night long she sang, and the thorn went deeper and deeper into her breast, and her life-blood ebbed away from her. Inversion and simile are used to emphasize the sacrifice of the Nightingale, express the pain that she had to suffer from “Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song” “Crimson as a ruby was the heart”… Besides, the repetition of sentence and paragraph structure “But the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn. 'Press closer, little Nightingale,' cried the Tree, 'or the Day will come before the rose is finished. '” emphasizes the sacrifice of the Nightingale to the true love, which she considered as the most important thing in the world.

The Nightingale’s song also reflects semantic field of love “She sang first of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl…” “She sang of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb”, to praise the Love as the most important thing in the world. The Nightingale fostered the red rose by heart and blood, accompanied with her sad and moving songs. The readers are moved not by birth, neither love nor death, but by the determination and devotion to foster the true love perfected by death. Oscar Wilde has great passion love and has persistently pursuing it or his whole lifetime.

In this tale, the Nightingale becomes his tongue and mouth. She sings to death with a thorn in her

heart for the passion which she thinks is the most precious thing in the whole world. Her passion is pure passion, and she doesn’t want anything in return except that the Student should be a true lover “All that I ask of you return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty. ” We find out that the only “true lover” is in fact the Nightingale.

She is the only one with sincere feelings, and she is prepared to sacrifice her life for those feelings, even though she knew she would not gain anything from it. The fact that she is doing it for love, and that she is making someone happy, is enough for her. She is really the only one who deserves love – the only one worthy of it. In a letter to one of his friends, Oscar Wilde wrote “The nightingale is the true lover, if there is one. She, at least, is Romance, and the student and the girl are, like most of us, unworthy of Romance.

So, at least, it seems to me, but I like to fancy that there may be many meanings in the tale, for in writing it I did not start with an idea and clothe it in form, but began with a form and strove to make it beautiful enough to have many secrets and many answers. ” Maybe, the Nightingale personifies the author of this work, she is a true lover, devoted pursuer of love, who dares to sacrifice her own precious life

for a true love with pain, sorrow, bitterness, difficulties, sacrifice and happiness inside. All the author wrote in this tale is like an ill omen in his later.

The passion of the Nightingale reflects the deep theme Art for Art’s sake. It also reflects Wilde’s aestheticism in its ongoing conflict with utilitarianism. What he did for his love is like what the Nightingale did for the Student. However, what she did is in vain, because although the Student listened, he couldn’t understand what the Nightingale was saying to him, for he knew the things that were written in books. And the red rose – the fruit of passion – was thrown into the gutter for something unworthy. To sum up, as the true love is the deep theme of the tale, the characters have different attitude towards it.

Oscar Wilde has great passion love and has persistently pursuing it for his whole lifetime. In this famous fairy tale, the Nightingale becomes his mouth and tongue. The Nightingale is an emblem of the author himself, who is prepared to sacrifice his own life for his pure passion, for Love, for Art, for what he considers the most precious thing in the whole world whereas the society outside are all one-sided psychically. They have devalued the "capacity to love", here symbolized by both the Nightingale and the rose.