Gedan Beliran

Mth 1-2:30

December 8, 2015

Jessa Mae De Guzman

Diana Marriz Naldoza
Aiza Taculad
Edgar Fernandez
The Sick Rose
BY WILLIAM BLAKE
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy?

In Biographical perspective the dominant message in "The Sick Rose" is that

innocence is almost always corrupted in some way, and that is a bad thing. Blake is
talking about reality in this poem, and is not using imagination or fantasy in it at all.
W.Blake could also mean rose his heart, William Blake wrote the Sick Rose to
describe how an affair may have been negatively affecting his relationship with his
wife.
Structural analysis can be used in this poem. The following points will justify why we
said so. One of the symbols used are arbitrary (rose, worm, night, howling storm,
bed, dark love and crimson joy). Second, metaphor and other figures of speech are
also used (personification, metaphor and apostrophe). Third, the repetition of
certain structures are seen (sick, worm, storm, dark, secret and destroy). Lastly, the
meter of the poem (two quatrains and ABCB rhyme).

In formalist the poem can establishing a touch through the depths of the passage
and its metaphorical and allegorical point of view, the subject which is the rose
takes account of being a literary flower, the conventional symbol of love. The flower
is living as the hostage of the worm - the image of biblical serpent and the symbol
of death. The worm creeps in unnoticeably in the rose's very bed where the flower
itself is starting to wither. This denotes that love is infected; the rose is ailing
unawarely, and so is love. The love which is being destroyed discreetly, tainted by
secrecy which the symbol of immorality suffices towards the shame and the death
of the one-sided passion. The poem states how love could be so weak whenever not
paid back, most especially when it starts to confuse the holder. It could result to
obsession, then madness.
Now let us unlock the meaning of the poem in psychoanalytical way. A woman is
symbolically presented, as Rose, in the caged situation and, being unable to free
herself, finds an alternative pleasure. In the poem, "invisible" and "worm" are the
key words to the whole poem. " Invisible" literally means that anything visible -such
as a worm or a man- is not apparent to the senses, so seeing the" invisible"
becomes a result of imagination. The worms are crawling more like fingers that
stimulate her sensitive areas than a penis; to say that the worm is a symbol for a
human male.
In the poem, the speaker, a witness of the woman's masturbation, keeps distance
from the scene and describes it with surprise and a warning. With her worm-like
finger, which she imagines to belong to a certain male figure, she starts the genital
self-stimulating habit at night, touching her rosy sensitive areas and inserting her
finger into the vagina to fulfill her "crimson joy." The poet passionately proclaims;
thou art sick, as he finds her nymphomaniac habit that is sorely sickening her
genital.
Using a Feminist perspective, the Rose represents an innocent or a beautiful
woman. The invisible worm that only goes out during the night represents a boys
penis destroying the virginity of the girl. The crimson bed on a feminist perspective
means the loss of purity or virginity. The woman is always bothered by her
conscience that is why she is sick.

In a marxist perspective, the rose there may represent crops. The worm may
represent pests. They were being attacked by worms or pests

that is why their

fruits are not that good. And because of that people were saddened because their
income will also be affected. They were unhappy. And a once prosperous harvest
turned into a bad one.

As a reader, my response to the poem the first time I have read it was that it is
about a girl or a woman who fell in love with the wrong person. She was then left
devastated when the man she loves left her after giving her virginity to him thus the
lines Has found out thy bed/Of crimson joy indicating the loss of her virginity. For
me, line And his dark secret love means that the man already has a girlfriend or a
wife but then he still got involved with the girl. And the line Does thy life destroy
means that the girls love for the man and the loss of her virginity went to waste
because the man eventually left her for his girlfriend or wife after he got what he
wanted.

Reference:
Cervo, Nathan. "Blake's' The Sick Rose.'" Explicator. 48: 4 (Summer, 1990), 253-54.
"The

Sick

Rose

by

William

Blake".

The

Poetry

Foundation.

Retrieved 18

December 2013.
www.http://alloflitcrit.blogspot.com/2015/07/summarry- analysis-of-sick-rose.html
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172938