Material Love vs Spiritual Love,The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wild.



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Love has different shades and shapes. In the short story The Nightingale and the Rose Written by Oscar Wilde, the depiction is on infatuation between young lovers and the spiritual love which is beyond the materialistic world. Here the writer unveils how love between men and women gets its value and on the opposite he brings about an element of nature to tell how the love should be valued as it is the foundation of everything. Further, the story illustrates the defeat of true love before the force of material world. The story is an everlasting tragedy on the devaluation of spiritual love in the materialistic world contrasting the noble deed of sacrificing by nature in order to preserve true love in the world which ends up in failure.

The emptiness of the students in spiritual values is shown using his garden without flowers. His mind is nourished with only knowledge in the books. He seems having lack of emotional education which is reflected in his behavior. He seems worried about losing his beloved if he fails to find a rose flower. This mentality of achieving and losing is found in the material world. The little bird, on the contrary, find love is a thing to be happy and a matter to be sung. She misunderstands the behavior of the students thinking he suffers because of the genuine love he bears in his heart.

The value the bird gives to the spiritual love is contrasted with the value student given to his love. The bird keeps love above every valuable thing in the world, above every precious gem in human world. She believes human love is much valuable than the life of herself. She does not hesitate to give her life on behalf of it. Students reply to his own emotions shows materialistic. He does not believe in his love as he worries he would lose his beloved if he fails to give her a flower. He does nothing to find this flower but weeping and sleeping. When it comes to the girl, she rejects the students love as she received some jewellery from Chamberlin’s nephew. These things prove that the human world consider love as a materialistic gain while the nature believes that love is the root and most valuable thing in the world and sacrifices everything for it. 

Spiritual love loses its hard earned value in the face of the human world which sees only the material value of something. The boy throws the rose into the gutter of the street not knowing the great sacrifice made by the little bird. It shows how unaware the human world about spiritual love. The cart wheel turning over the flower further emphasizes how the man-made world trample the value of nature’s true values. This story seems further implies that the real love is only found in the natural world. The student going to start studying again proves that the human keeps on walking towards the material world. This proves that they do not urge to understand where they had gone wrong. 


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Read the story of Nitingale and the Rose by Oscar Wild.

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Summary of The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde.

The Character of Nightingale in The Nightingale and the Roseby Oscar Wilde.

Themes and Literary Techniques Found in The Nightingale and The Rose

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