Red Rose Mother of Flowers

Red Roses
 from Mr. Qualitative

My first blog from my English 102 class is about symbols and allusion; therefore I am posting something that have a thousand meanings, and that is red roses.  

A passage that cought my attention in my research is:

"Almost any flower can represent a girl, but the rose has always stood for the most beautiful, the most beloved – in many languages "Rose" remains a popular given name – and often for one who is notably young, vulnerable, and virginal. Shakespeare's Laertes, when he sees his sister Ophelia in her madness, cries "O Rose of May!" (Hamlet 4.5.158), bringing out not only her uniqueness but the blighting of her brief life. Othello, on the verge of killing Desdemona, thinks of her as a rose which he is about to pluck (Othello 5.2.13–16); Orsino tells Viola, "women are as roses, whose fair flower / Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour" (12N 2.4.38–39). The French poet Baïf vows, "I will not force the Rose / Who hides in the bosom / Of a tightly closed bud / The beauty of her flower" ("La Rose," in Livre des Passetems II)."

I have chosen this passage because it gives a good description of a rose; it compares roses with the beauty and other qualities of women. It shows how roses had being a symbol of inspiration of almost every poet, writer and artist. I like this passage because they all have a different meaning of what a rose is.

As we see Comparison and Similes can be seen any one these lines from many poems:

1. "Almost any flower can represent a girl, but the rose has always stood for the most beautiful, the most beloved – in many languages "Rose" remains a popular given name – and often for one who is notably young, vulnerable, and virginal." On this line we can see how he compare the beauty of a rose with the beauty of a women.
2. Shakespeare's Laertes, when he sees his sister Ophelia in her madness, cries "O Rose of May!" (Hamlet 4.5.158), bringing out not only her uniqueness but the blighting of her brief life. This line shows that roses cry like women.
3. "women are as roses, whose fair flower / Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour" (12N 2.4.38–39). On this line shows how women need to be conservatives as roses.
4. The French poet Baïf vows, "I will not force the Rose / Who hides in the bosom / Of a tightly closed bud / The beauty of her flower" ("La Rose," in Livre des Passetems II)."

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