I need good grades!!! so please help me with "the sick rose"

[littleLindkvist]

Hallo I need a bit of help from some very brilliant people... with even better ideas than myself..
I have to write a 4 pages long analysis of 'the sick rose' which I have to defend at an oral exsam!!!

It's fine... an interesting text, which I believe to have a lot of similarities with the works of the danish poet Emil Aarestrup (red. my favorite poet).
they are both from the Romantic periode... their poetry was shaped by their view on life and death...

my interpretation so far is of a sexual dilemma.. about wanting something thats not good for you...

but if you can, please give me a revolutionary ideas you will save my very pretty behind!!!

[The Unnamable]

you will save my very pretty behind!!!
That bit did it.

There isn’t a commentator on this poem that hasn’t highlighted its sexual connotations. I have often read student essays about the worm’ s ‘rape’ of the rose. How about seeing it as a basic fact of nature? The rose’s destruction is simply a necessary consequence of existence. We are born. We grow. We die. Blake’s use of rhythm and rhyme effectively underlines the conclusiveness of this simple truth but his use of symbols encourages us to look for ‘deeper meanings’. Perhaps the dynamic and dramatic relationship between the two is a reflection of how we live our lives. We are essentially utterly meaningless, insignificant creatures made of organic matter. Like all organic matter, we eventually rot. We aren’t too keen on that unpalatable notion so we construct self-aggrandising, imaginative realms to deny this fact. There is nothing insidious about an actual worm but that’s rather too prosaic for us so we endow it with psychological / religious / spiritual / political (take your pick) significance.

[Bluebiird]

In my book, of Blakes' Songs Innocence + Experience poems, there are comments in the back by a guy called Geoffrey Keynes. And this is what he says about it:

"This poem is usually interpreted as an image of the troubles of earthly love. The symbolism of a red rose for corporeal love and of the worm (or the flesh) for the source of the sickness is plain. In the illustration a worm (banded like an earthworm in some copies) is entering the heart of the rose and simultaniously the spirit of joy is extruded. The 'howling storm' in which the worm comes is a symbol of materialism. The bush from which the rose has bent down to the ground presents several other details. On the left is a 'catterpiller' (always spelled thus by Blake) feeding on a leaf, the creature being for him, as for the Bible and the Elizabethan poets, the symbol of the 'pillager' or despoiler. Elsewhere Blake denoted the 'catterpiller' as the chief enemy of the rose, equating it with the proesthood, who lay their curses on the fairest joys. Further down the stems are two figures in attitudes of dispair. The menacing thorns scattered along the whole length of the stems emphasize the pains of love on earth."

That's what he said in this book, I hope t's helpful to you.
Me personally, I just like the poem, I don't know why, I just do, probably because its short.
We discussed what it was about in class when we first started Blake. We mainly went along with the theme that it's about rape and forbidden love. My teacher continually goes on about how it symbolises a free love and goes on about the context of how people aren't free because the church and all restrains them.
Anyway, that's what I've learnt about it. I hope it's helpful to you.
That reminds me, better revise, my english exam is tomorrw and it's about Blake, Death of a salesman, Whthering Heights and Hamlet

[littleLindkvist]

Dear unmanable...

I was glad to recieve your response, since it gave me a new point of view.. I had interpretated the poem as a question of death... in some way, but not with a that basic point of view... more as a symbol of fear, fear of dying... and there by life and the ability to love... realizing that it requires strength to live in the present... underlining that youth and beauty is transitorial..
But I can see the beauty in the simplicity of you interpretation... it is often the simples things we forget in the search for the 'deeper' meaning...

but does that mean that you totally reject the possibility of an interpretation regarding sexual disapointment, frustrations and fears?

[The Unnamable]

Dear unmanable...
What a fantastic slip! Please note mods that I am not making fun of the spelling but merely expressing my enjoyment of one of the best typos I’ve read for a long time. If it was deliberate, littleLindkvist, then you have my admiration.

But I can see the beauty in the simplicity of you interpretation... it is often the simples things we forget in the search for the 'deeper' meaning...
And this is what Blake fully exploits and recreates in the simplicity of his own poem.


but does that mean that you totally reject the possibility of an interpretation regarding sexual disapointment, frustrations and fears?
No, certainly not and the ideas you mention above should be included in your essay. I can remember reading this poem with my own English teacher. It was the first time I had heard of a ‘phallic symbol’. These days I can’t move for them. We were sixteen-year-old boys and looked a bit puzzled when he told us. I guess we were all trying to make out boa constrictors would be more appropriate.

You asked for some way into the poem that would (a) be different from the usual readings and (b) give you enough ideas to write four pages. By looking at it this way, you can use the above idea as the basis of your reading (i.e. the fact that the symbols and the simplicity and rhythm/rhyme pull in opposite directions) and then flesh out your essay by looking at alternative possibilities for the meanings and significance of those symbols. You can have a section on a sexual reading, another on a psychological reading and so on. To conclude you can pull it all together by returning to a consideration of how Blake’s technique and approach have not only enabled these multiple interpretations but also allowed him to comment on the way we make meanings as well as why. Good luck with it.

[littleLindkvist]

hehehehehehehehehehe... righhht (said precisely like Austin Powers..) hihi... am also laughing my 'pretty' arse off over here in Denmark...

I am afraid that typo's like that are unavoidable when you are as absent-minded as I am... (say hallo to the girl how could walk a couple of kilometres, in five degrees of frost, wearing only one winter boot... didn't notice before my mother asked where the other one was... because I was thinking of my favorite poem!!!! and how to translate the beautiful lyrics of 'Under byen')
but this, I must confess, is most certainly one of the better ones... might even use it again...

again thank you, think this might end up being pretty good... at least I have a lot of ideas now.. and that's allways a good starting point.. an indication of the fact that things can't go completely wrong.. (even though you are absent-minded).

[Jean-Baptiste]

I realize that it is quite late for a reply on this matter, as your exam was probably finished months ago, and finished very well from the looks of things on this thread, but I have a suggestion on the interpretation of this poem. I had a very good discussion of its contents and significance with my own English Professor, and became convinced that "The Rose" is a social commentary on the rampant problem of Venereal disease in London at the time. All content seems to support this theory strongly, while demonstrating a brilliant ambiguity. This does not in any way detract from the theme of love/sex found on the surface of the poem, rather the two themes compliment each other so well that there seems to be no border between them. The symbolism was perfectly selected to support them both.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this idea?

[william blake]

O is a shout to call you out, rose; a rose by any other name, thou is the name i used to call you, art is what you used to be, sick means you have fallen