Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Blog # 1: Thorns on a Rose



http://pelumiige.blogspot.com/2011/01/with-roses-comes-thorns.html


Today is the 1st time I am creating a blog, this is our first assignment and hopefully I get the hang of this. If not please bare with me as I experiment with this site. I hope you all enjoy my take on the use of symbols and allusions of thorns on a rose.

This is the quote I choose to use:

 A familiar proverb, repeated in many poems, is "Roses have thorns" (Shakespeare, Sonnets 35) or "ne'er the rose without the thorn" (Herrick, "The Rose"). If you go about plucking roses, gentlemen, you may get pricked. In his famous "Heidenröslein," Goethe presents a dialogue between a boy and a rose: "The boy said,'I shall pick you, / Little rose on the heath.' / The little rose said,'I shall prick you / So you'll always think of me.'"

The truth is that every rose grows with thorns, only after the rose is plucked or cut are the thorns removed. They do this in order to make a nice bouquet of flowers, and also in order to protect people hurting themselves with the thorns. The quote shows that this is true in regards to every rose and the reason why this quote stood out to me is because the little boy that picks the rose may be drawn to its exterior beauty. However, he does not stop to think of the consequences of picking the rose and that's why the rose responds to him about her thorns leaving behind a memory.

Once a rose is picked from a garden, it lives only for a few days if cared for correctly. Unfortunately the end result will always be the same and that is, that it eventually will wither and die. Yet a prick provides pain which can be associated with a memory. Once you feel the puncture of a thorn on your finger, you will remember the drop of blood and also the pain that lasts; which helps to make you remember not to make the same mistake in the future. It serves as a lesson that will be learned and never forgotten unlike the rose which has already come and gone, only leaving behind a form of a memory.





"Rose." Dictionary of Literary Symbols. Ed. Michael Ferber. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge, 1999. 172-177. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 7 Mar. 2012.






2 comments:

  1. I love your blog! Very fancy font. The italics looks especially good in it. :-)

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    1. Thank you sooo much... I had fun decorating and customizing it. =)

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