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William BlakeThe Sick Rose
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1794A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Rose
Roses are among the strongest conventional symbols in English. As the word “crimson” suggests (Line 6), “The Sick Rose” is a red rose. Red roses traditionally symbolize romance, love, beauty, courage, and purity. Of these, Blake focuses on the rose’s associations with beauty and purity, and shapes the flower, when healthy, into a symbol of youthful, prelapsarian innocence. The rose, then, stands in as a symbol of the Garden of Eden itself and the virginal innocence contained within.
Blake’s rose, however, is never presented in its ideal state. When the poem begins, the rose is already “sick” (Line 1), and the reader is already informed of this affliction from the poem’s title. This is also true of humanity in the Christian conception—particularly after the Fall, every individual born is viewed as potentially corrupt and predatory.
The Worm
The worm is the most complex symbol in “The Sick Rose,” and, like its animal and religious namesake, it is difficult to get hold of or dissect without accidentally creating two meanings. Outside of the poem, worms often symbolize death or decomposition, and Blake’s worm maintains part of this association though its role in the rose’s death. But the worm’s most salient symbolic role is as a representation of Satan. Satan, in traditional Christian imagery, is often connected with the snake that enters the Garden of Eden and tempts Adam and Eve. This connection is made concrete in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which also refers to the snake as a “worm” (Paradise Lost, 1674, Book 9, Line 1068). Milton also depicts Satan as having to navigate through chaos in order to get to Earth, and that journey is reflected in the worm’s navigation through ”night” and “howling storm[s]” on its way to the flower (Lines 3, 4).
The worm also has a number of other resonances that support its role as an agent of death and corruption. For instance, worms are associated with burrowing into apples and embedding themselves in their core in much the same way that Blake’s worm finds its way into the flower’s “bed / Of crimson joy” (Lines 5-6). In both instances, the worm destroys what it burrows into.
“thy bed / Of crimson joy”
The rose’s bed has a number of potential complementary readings. The bed itself is representative of both a garden and the marital bed; the worm’s entrance into that bed is both an act of vegetable destruction and sexual aggression. The sexual analogy can be extended to make the “bed / Of crimson joy” represent the female genitalia that the phallic worm enters into (Lines 5-6). This sexual reading resonates with another possible interpretation of the “bed / Of crimson joy” as an apple—or the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge itself—that the worm burrows into and destroys.
Like with many of Blake’s symbols, a precise meaning behind the rose’s bed is impossible to pin down. However, all possible interpretations complement one another and point in similar directions; the bed is the vehicle through which the worm corrupts the rose.
Related Titles
By William Blake
