The Nightingale and the Rose

As in many fairy tales, the animals, plants, and other natural features (such as the moon) in “The Nightingale and the Rose” are anthropomorphic representations of animals, humanlike in their ability to speak and sympathize with others. They all have traits typically associated with humans: the Nightingale is portrayed as thoughtful, the Lizard as skeptical, and the Oak-tree as sympathetic. In addition to paying homage to fairy stories and fables, this anthropomorphism suggests that humans, overly focused on logic and human-based knowledge, may be totally ignorant of the depths of nature. What’s more, the animals and trees’ ability to communicate with each other establishes a sense of kinship in nature that contrasts markedly with the selfishness of the human characters.

In addition to the anthropomorphism of natural features, the story also anthropomorphizes ideas and concepts such as love and philosophy. For instance, the Nightingale says that “Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty […] His [Love’s] lips are sweet as honey, and his breath is like frankincense” (62). Here, the Nightingale gives human shapes and even genders to concepts like love, philosophy, and power. This lends these abstractions a sense of tangibility.

There is a stark sense of irony—a discrepancy between expectations and reality—throughout the story, which ultimately works to heighten the tragedy of the Nightingale’s death. This irony is variously dramatic (when the reader knows something a character does not), situational (when the reality of a situation is contrary to what one would think), or both, and it typically underscores The Limits of Materialism and Pragmatism by highlighting the ignorance of such worldviews.

For example, when the Student muses that the Nightingale has no feelings and “would not sacrifice herself for others” (63), there is strong dramatic irony at play, as the reader knows that the Nightingale is sacrificing herself for the Student. Dramatic irony occurs again when the Student finds the rose and labels the discovery “luck” in total ignorance of its origins. When the Professor’s daughter rejects the rose, the Student calls her “very ungrateful” and then throws the rose into the gutter, creating situational irony, as the Student is being ungrateful toward the Nightingale for the rose. The Student’s declaration that he will “study Metaphysics” because “in this age to be practical is everything” is likewise ironic (67), as there appears to be no more practicality to metaphysics than there is to the love that the Student derides. By the end of the story, the Nightingale’s question, “what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?” (62), becomes ironic, as the Nightingale has a greater capacity for love and feeling than the Student and the Professor’s daughter.

The setting is nonspecific to any particular place or time, although the mention of the vice-chancellor suggests that the story may take place in Britain. The story unfolds almost entirely in the natural world of the garden outside the Student’s room. The garden is described in rich detail and language, creating the sense of an Edenic environment, full of life and beauty, especially when compared to the far more sparsely described indoor setting of the Professor’s house. The garden is teeming with life, but the Student’s preoccupation with practicality and learning renders him unable to see the beauty of the world just outside his window.

The imagery—language that appeals to the senses—in “The Nightingale and the Rose” is highly evocative, creating intense images of both actual occurrences within the story, as well as hypothetical situations. For instance, the Student fantasizes in detail about his night at the ball with his love, describing how “she will dance so lightly that her feet will not touch the floor, and the courtiers in their gay dresses will throng around her” (59). When the Nightingale is told she must die for the red rose, she muses on the joys of life, remarking:

[I]t 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 (62).

This creates a vivid picture of natural beauty, underscoring all that the Nightingale is giving up.

Imagery also helps capture the beauty of the rose, at first “pale […] as the mist that hangs over the river, pale as the feet of the morning, and silver as the wings of the dawn” (64). The many images used here to describe the rose create a vivid picture of the most important symbol in the story, especially when the rose becomes “crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart” (65). This attention to the color of the rose stresses the significance of it as “crimson,” which symbolizes love and, in the context of the story, sacrifice, as it is the same color as the Nightingale’s blood.