THE SICK ROSE

CENTRAL IDEA:
The poem, “The Sick Rose”, portrays in subtle imagery Blake’s mystical idea about innocence and experience. Beauty is sick at the core; vulnerability is the essence of innocence. The path from ignorance and bliss to knowledge and satiety is inevitably a happy marriage -“bed of crimson joy”; yet, it yields destruction or loss predestined. Ironically, the rose, the cynosure, enjoys the rendezvous without being aware of the sickness that characterises it. This visionary idea that Blake represents involves the predicament of feminine beauty in human analogy in the guise of Shakespeare as he makes Hamlet blurt out, ‘Frailty, thy name is woman’!   

TITLE:
The poem is the point of view of a rose. The rose is a thing of beauty. It is the cynosure that attracts perils. A worm takes an opportune moment to prey on the ‘crimson’ boudoir of the rose. The rose, ironically, seems to be enjoying the passionate love-making of its predator, whose ‘dark’ love is a secret to it. The vigorous pleasure-seeking eats away the essence that is innocence and beauty of the rose. Thus the rose is destined to be loved, attacked, and led to its destruction. The rose cannot but accept it. So, it is sick. The poem revolves around this sickness that shrouds the rose. This along with its implicit human analogy makes the title an apt one.

AMBIGUITY OF MEANING:


Meaning is meant to be ambiguous! It may, or may not, lie in the text; it may, or may not, be a construct of the reading self. William Blake, probably, makes use of it.

Please, wait for the rest... 

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