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The Nightingale and the Rose
“The Nightingale and the Rose,” written by Oscar Wilde in the late nineteenth century, is a tragic emblematic story of selfishness and sacrifice that perfectly depicts the two notions of love. Using the two human characters, a professor’s daughter, and student, Wilde is able to demonstrate love as a shallow and superficial faux emotion.

About the Author
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams and plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment which was followed by his early death. Wilde's parents were successful Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London. At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel, a charge carrying a penalty of up to two years in prison. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with other men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour. In 1897, in prison, he wrote De Profundis which was published in 1905, a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six.

Plot Summary
The tale begins with a student lamenting about his love's request for a red rose in exchange for a dance. When the student is unable to collect a single red rose from his garden, he soon becomes sad and abandons all hope of dancing with his amore. In comparison, the nightingale, a character of nature, sympathizes with the student’s loneliness and is prepared to help him at any cost. Eventually, after a great attempt at finding a rose throughout the garden, the nightingale becomes acquainted with a tree that is able to help her, but at a cost: In order to obtain a rose for the student, the nightingale must first sing her sweet song to the silver moon, and give her life in order for the rose to be as superior as genuine love. The rose itself is a symbol of this fictitious love, often described as being crimson, the rose is a better representation of the young girls need for an object rather than an act of love and the students consent to a shallow, lustful relationship with this girl. Although in the beginning of the story, a fairytale ending is anticipated, the audience is able to witness a true act of selfless love; singing to the silver moon, the nightingale eventually presses herself deeply into a thorn, penetrating the thorn deep into her heart, eventually circulating her pure blood into the veins of the rose tree before the dawn of day and sacrificing her life to make the most beautiful and crimson rose for the student. The next morning when the student awakens and sees the perfect crimson rose at the top of the tree, he greedily takes it to the professor’s daughter, and without a second though of the nightingale, believes the growth of the rose is a miracle. During this hopeful exchange, however, the daughter denies the act of love, stating that another boy had given her real crimson rubies, signifying the student’s lack of social class, and identifying the false, materialistic love that was proposed between them in the beginning.

Characters

 * The Young Student
 * The Nightingale
 * The little Green Lizard
 * The Butterfly
 * The Daisy
 * The White Rose Tree
 * The Yellow Rose Tree
 * The Red Rose Tree
 * The Oak-tree
 * The Professor's Daughter

Symbolism
A Rose

By utilizing the symbolism of a rose as a lustful, materialistic exchange, Wilde can clearly exhibit the trivial idea of the class system and true love, and how sacrifice can be the test of true love.

Red

Red is often a colour used to symbolize strong emotions, or things of strong emotions rather than intellectual ideas. This can be translated to the students foolhardy love for the professor's daughter. Moreover, red be can also a symbol of energy, radiating its vitalizing life-force into human beings, which can help give insight as to why the Nightingale's life was necessary to bring colour to the rose.

Work Cited
"The Nightingale and the Rose". n.d. Web. 5 Feb. 2013 .

"The Nightingale and the Rose". n.d. Web. 5 Feb. 2013 

"The Nightingale and the Rose". n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2013 

"Symbolism: Colours". n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2013 

"Oscar Wilde". n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2013 

"The Happy Prince and Other Tales". n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2013 