Literary Text Summary

Title: The Nightingale and the Rose

Author: Oscar Wilde

Central Character:

The Nightingale is the central character. The Nightingale is a very hopeful and generous character, ready to sacrifice itself for love. ( A nightingale is a little brown and beige bird). Its opinion of love is very optimistic.

Other characters:

• There is the Student, who loves a girl. He is the reason why the Nightingale sacrifices herself because she considers him a "true lover". In the end, he loses faith in love.
• There is the tree, who helps the Nightingale to create a rose.
• There is the girl, who is selfish, and rejects the student in the end.

Setting:

The action takes place in the Student's garden, where there are flowers, trees, little animals and insects. The story lasts one evening, one night, and the day after.

Narrator:

The narrator is omniscient because he knows everything about all of the characters' feelings.

Events in summary:

The story is about a student, who is in love with a girl, and he needs a red rose to dance with her. 1. The student complains about not finding a red rose.

2. The Nightingale hears him, and does everything she can to find a red rose.

3. The Nightingale finds a way to obtain a rose, but she has to die for it.

4. The Student finds the rose the next day, and brings it to the girl.

5. The girl rejects him, and he loses faith in love.

Style + Tone:

• Tone: First, the tone is ironic. For example, in paragraph 39, the Student says how the Nightingale does not have feelings and how she is selfish, but the Nightingale sacrifices herself for the Student at the end. The Nightingale also says, in paragraph 30, "what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?". This is ironic because the end of the story shows us how much the Nightingale has more heart than the Student. Second, the tone is also hopeful when you see it on the Nightingale's point of view because she has hope that the sacrifice of her own life will create something much more important, love.
• Style: The author uses a lot of personifications in the story, which gives the Nightingale, a bird which isn't usually given importance to, a soul and a lot of importance.

Themes:
There is a lot of different, but important, themes in ''The Nightingale and the Rose''. Actually, love, hope, sacrifice, and devotion are several themes used by the author in the story.

Symbols:
The rose symbolizes the birth of love, the beginning of a relationship. The Nightingale represents the sacrifice that you make when you are in love with someone because you always have to sacrifice a part of yourself in a relationship.

Evaluation:
After a first reading, we can think that ''The Nightingale and the Rose'' is only a love story about a boy who would do anything for his girl. However, after a topical analysis of the whole story, we realize that it is also a critique of how love has changed (people only think with their head and do not listen to their heart). We can also see a message of hope in a true love story, and the Nightingale symbolizes this powerful hope.