The Sick Rose
In this poem, the speaker is addressing Rose, informing her of her sickness. The cause of her illness is a worm that cannot be seen because it howls in the darkness. After infecting Rose with the infection, she is infected, and her life is destroyed. Personification has significantly been used in the poem. Human qualities have been personified, such as worm and rose. Rose can become sick, and the worm has been given human powers such as making love and find out bed. The personification language gives a symbolic identity to the words used in the poem. Both Rose and worm have been contrasted to provide deeper meaning to the poem.
The theme of goodness and virtue has dramatically explored in the poem. Comparatively, evil has been personified by words such as sick, howling storm, destroy, worm, and night. The worm is the imagery of darkness, and it connotes lust, destruction, corruption, sin, and death. The worm is also mysterious since the writer describes it as invisible. It gets engaged in secretive and sinful activities such as finding bed, secret love, and expressing dark.
On the other hand, the rose stands for virtue. Rose represents purity, innocence, and beauty. However, it also represents naivety and ignorance. While love is a beautiful thing, destructive love is tragic.
The innocence of rose and its purity gets ruined by the evil worm because of experience. Rose and her beauty get destroyed by sexual passion and the jealousy of the worm. As a symbol of love, Rose gets damaged by the selfishness of the worm. The worm destroys Rose by entering her, causing sickness then destruction. The destruction is a symbolism of pain, secrecy, hypocrisy, and deceit. In the sick rose, the secret of love graduates to become a disease. All these demonstrate the theme of evil
Feminism is also a theme evident in the poem. Although the feministic view is hidden, a more in-depth perspective highlights it. The worm is seen as a form of Patriarchy. Patriarchy is dominant and has a high capability of destroying the woman and her race. As such, the worm is symbolic of the serpent and moral corruption. It signifies moral decay, something that is an explorer and exploiter. The worm which appears invisible and hidden is also repulsive. Words such as night, howling storm, and secret love all connote to intercourse between the rose and the worm. The rose is depicted as feeling inferior and powerless to the worm. It is attacked at night by the worm and destroyed. The destruction may be interpreted to mean selfish love and exploitation. The innocence of the rose is exploited because of its inexperience.
The worm and the rose well represent the theme of destructive love and its consequences. The worm exploits the innocence of the rose by visiting her in darkness. The result of this visit is the death of the union is the death of the rose. The end, however, is not sudden as the rose suffers in sickness before dying.