1) After learning the text, do you think "the Nightingale", "the Rose", "the Student", "the Girl" or other figures have symbolic meanings? What are they?
2) Why does the author seem to have to chosen "the Student, the Girl, the great dusty book, Philosophy" and so on as the targets of his ridicule and contempt?
3) Do you think love is a useful thing? After all, the Student didn't succeed in using the red rose to win the girl's heart. Does that prove that love is useless? Illustrate your ideas.
1.The Nightingale symbolizes pure, selfless love and sacrifice. The Rose symbolizes true love, beauty, and passion created through sacrifice. The Student symbolizes people who do not understand real love. The Girl symbolizes materialistic views of love.
2.Wilde ridiculed the student because he failed to understand the value of true love. He also criticized the girl, saying that she cared only about material love rather than true love. The book further satirized the boy because he did not truly place philosophy in an important position but used reading as an excuse to avoid the reality of being rejected. What Wilde attacked was a world that valued power and status over genuine emotions.
3.Even if a student fails, love still holds value. The sacrifice of the nightingale demonstrates that love itself is powerful and beautiful. The student's failure does not prove that love is useless; it indicates that he has not understood true love. Love is not about winning someone's affection through wealth or status; rather, it is about two sincere people fall in love with each other.
1.In The Nightingale and the Rose, all major characters and images have symbolic meanings. The nightingale stands for pure, selfless, sacrificial ideal love. The red rose represents precious love won at the cost of life, hinting that true love is easily ignored. The student symbolizes a bookish person who only talks about love but lacks the courage to act. The girl is a sign of worldly people who only care about material things and status. The thick, dusty book and philosophy stand for empty knowledge that is disconnected from life and useless for solving real problems.
2.The author mocks the student, the girl, philosophy and so on to criticize social flaws of his time. The student only talks about love in books but never gives real devotion; the girl treats love as a trade for gifts and status; philosophy seems profound yet fails to answer the question of what true love is. By doing so, Wilde satirizes the hypocritical and materialistic social atmosphere, and highlights the preciousness of the nightingale’s sincere, sacrificial love.
3.Love is definitely useful, and the student’s failure doesn’t prove otherwise. His loss stemmed from the girl’s materialism and his own cowardly idealism, not love itself. The nightingale’s sacrifice for the rose embodies love’s true value—selfless sincerity that goes beyond trivial gains and losses. The discarded rose only shows some people are too blind to appreciate true love; what’s useless is the utilitarian mindset that judges feelings by jewels and status, not love.
1.The Nightingale symbolizes pure love. The nightingale gives its life to create a red rose for the student’s love, interpreting the essence of true love at the cost of its own life.The Rose symbolizes the beauty of love and the value of sacrifice. The student claims to pursue true love but is a superficial emotional taker due to his lack of action and real understanding of love.The girl values jewels far more than the red rose.
2. The student seems affectionate but is actually hypocritical and shallow. The girl’s vanity and utilitarianism go against the essence of love.
3. The nightingale’s sacrifice interprets the spiritual value of love—it represents selflessness, sincerity and dedication. love can enrich people’s emotions and shape noble souls, which is a spiritual value far beyond secular utility. Therefore, love is not useless.
1.The Nightingale: Selfless love, true artist, spiritual devotion. She represents pure, sacrificial love and the belief in love's transcendent power.
The Red Rose: Symbolizes the embodiment of love, ideals, and the pursuit of goals. It is bought with the nightingale's life , representing the most sincere emotion
Student : Shallow intellectualism and emotionless rationality. He understands love theoretically but lacks genuine feeling and loyalty.
Girl : Vanity and materialism. She values wealth and status over sincere emotion, representing a corrupt, pragmatic world.
2.Wilde mocks utilitarianism and fake academia in the story. The Student’s "Philosophy" and dusty books symbolize empty intellectualism, while the Girl stands for a materialistic society that values utility and gain. He ridicules those who treat love as a cold deal and art/knowledge as tools, not noble ideals.
3.No, the Student's failure doesn't prove love is useless. The Nightingale's sacrifice demonstrates love's inherent, sublime value—true love is valuable regardless of outcome. The failure reveals the shallowness of the recipients, not the uselessness of love itself. Love's "usefulness" cannot be measured by material success
（1）I think the nightingale symbolizes true love and those who would go through fire and water for love; the student symbolizes those false lovers who talk about love all the time but make no effort for it; the girl symbolizes materialism, utilitarianism and some other realistic factors.
（2）This is in line with the subtlety and metaphor of fairy tales, neither spoiling the hazy beauty of fairy tales nor losing their profound philosophy and enlightenment.
（3）Yes, I believe that love is something useful. The student may not have won the girl's heart, but the reason for this is not that he failed to express his love through that rose. The reason is that he is not a qualified, genuine lover! Throughout the entire fairy tale, the boy made no effort with that rose. He merely complained and blamed others. The boy didn't understand the true sincerity of the nightingale's sacrifice for that rose. The girl despised the rose sent by the boy. Neither of them were truly lovers. Love is about giving, not taking. Love is not for seeking rewards.
1.Nightingale symbolizes the spirit of purity, idealism and sacrifice for love.Rose symbolizes the crystallization of love, art and sacrifice.Student: Symbolism of utilitarianism.Girl symbolizes secular, vanity and utilitarianism.Oaks, lizards and butterflies symbolize public opinion.
2.The author satirizes the utilitarian view of love and the indifference of society.It also sets off the nightingale's pure and selfless nature even more.
3.Love is not actually useless and it is merely stifled by utilitarianism. If you truly want to win someone's heart, you must offer pure and selfless love.
1.I think they are symbolic. For example, roses symbolize beauty, and the student symbolizes idealistic but superficial lovers
2. The author chose them as the targets of ridicule to expose social defects. The philosophical meaning represented by the behavior of middle school students and girls in the article is different from the author's belief.
3. I think love is useful. Students failed to win the girl's heart with red roses because they didn't understand what love was, not because love was useless.
1. The Nightingale: Stands for selfless love. It dies to create the red rose for true love.
The Rose: Stands for genuine love, forged through pain and devotion.
The Student: Stands for shallow idealism. He claims to love but abandons it when rejected, lacking real understanding of love.
The Girl: Stands for vanity. She chooses jewels over the rose, valuing wealth over emotion.
2. The Student/Girl show love is reduced to a transaction in a greedy society.
Philosophy/old books represent useless academic knowledge. They don’t teach the student real emotional wisdom.
3. Love is not useless. Love’s value lies in its essence, not just outcomes.The student’s failure comes from his shallowness, not love’s worth. He saw the rose as a tool, not a symbol of sincere love.The nightingale’s love gave its life meaning, while the student’s dismissal left him empty.
1.I believe the nightingale symbolizes those who are very pure and long for an ideal love. They are willing to give everything for their ideal love. At the same time, it also represents people who are not good at judging others. First, upon hearing the student's story with the girl, it is willing to give its life just to obtain a single red rose, which shows its pure notion of love. However, it also fails to pay attention to the student's actions, does not observe carefully, and cannot judge people correctly, which is ultimately the reason why the red rose ends up discarded in the gutter.
Roses symbolize love, but this love is material, parasitic, and untimely.I think it can be seen from the fact that the roses went uncared for from the very beginning.
The student symbolizes someone who is brave in pursuing love but does not offer true feelings. Although his effort to cross social classes in order to woo the girl is quite admirable, when he hears that the girl wants a red rose, he only cries and takes no action. To me, this suggests he may not be that sincere. After the girl rejects him, he throws away the rose and goes back to flipping through dusty books, which further highlights this point.
I think the girl symbolizes money, someone who likes to play with others and hang around the powerful. When a student expressed their feelings to her, she probably knew that she wouldn't get a red rose but still wanted one. When the red rose actually arrived, she started talking about how she represents money, rejecting the red rose and rejecting the students who didn't have enough wealth.
2.Because the student did not put in genuine effort, and the girl did not cherish sincere feelings, only caring about monetary value, the great dusty books represent the student's feigned effort, merely an excuse to comfort oneself. Philosophy should not be used by students to gain a false advantage in love. Because this kind of love is not the pure love symbolized by the nightingale as intended by the author, it does not help the author’s ideal of love, and therefore, these are the objects of his ridicule and contempt.
3.I believe that love is useful to a certain extent. A girl rejecting a student only indicates that there was no spark of love between them; it doesn't mean that love is useless. First of all, love can provide emotional value, which is beyond doubt; secondly, in some people's relationships, they support each other and become better versions of themselves.
1.I think the nightingale symbolizes the Selfless dedication and the true love,the Rose symbolizes the embodiment of love,the student symbolizes shallow love and the girl symbolizes material love.
2.because the student is unwilling to take action for true love in fact,the girl is a materialistic person and the philosophy is used as an excuse to avoid students' lack of understanding of true love.
3.Yes,i think love is a useful thing.The nightingale is willing todedicate itself life.
1. Yes, I think they have different symbolic meanings. The Nightingale symbolizes a true lover who has selfless love and is even willing to sacrifice her own life for love. The Rose symbolizes passionate and sincere love. The Student symbolizes a person who doesn't understand love and is ungrateful. The Girl symbolizes someone who only pursues material things while is ignorant of true and sincere love.
2." The Student, the Girl, the great dusty book, Philosophy" and so on represent theory and idealism. By describing these, the author wanted to criticize the time when material things were put emphasis on only while practice and emotions were ignored.
3.I think love is a useful thing when it is truly understood. The reason why the Boy failed to use the red rose to win the Girl's heart is that they are not true lovers and understand love as something very simple and superficial.Love can actually have a positive influence on each other if the essence of it is understood.To a certain extent, true love can make people feel a sense of security and warm.
- Nightingale: Selfless love and art's devotion to beauty (sacrifices life for ideal).
- Rose: Love's fragility; gap between ideal and real (made by sacrifice, dismissed by Girl).
- Student: Shallow romance and materialism (uses rose to win Girl, not for love itself).
- Girl: Society's materialism (loves jewels more than emotional/artistic expression).
2) Why Ridicule These
- Student and Girl: Love as transaction (Student "buys" affection, Girl wants material gain).
- "Dusty book" and "Philosophy": Lifeless academics (no emotional depth). Wilde shows society ignores art/emotion for hollow intellectualism/materialism.
3) Is Love Useless?
- No. Student fails because his "love" is shallow (wants approval, not real bond).
- Nightingale's sacrifice shows love's power: creates beauty (rose) and reveals devotion. Love's value is in inspiring selflessness/art, not just practical results.
1.The Red Rose: It stands for the beauty and fragility of love, as well as the cost of true love (the nightingale’s life). It also represents the ideal of love that the student pursues but fails to value properly.
2.The Student and the Girl: They represent the people of the time who mistake superficiality for love— the student loves in words only, while the girl loves material things. Wilde ridicules their lack of understanding of true love. The great dusty book and Philosophy: These symbolize dry, abstract intellectualism that fails to guide real life. The student buries himself in philosophical books but cannot grasp the essence of love, which Wilde sees as a failure of academic learning to connect with human emotion.Overall, Wilde’s ridicule aims to expose the spiritual poverty of a society that prioritizes materialism and empty intellectualism over genuine feeling and selfless love.
3.Love is not useless, even though the student fails to win the girl’s heart:The value of love lies in the act of giving, not the outcome. The nightingale’s sacrifice for the rose is a testament to the beauty and nobility of true love— its value does not depend on whether the student succeeds in his pursuit.
1.I think the nightingale stands for a true lover. The rose is the carrier of love, representing selfless love. The student represents a hypocritical person, and the girl represents a utilitarian person.
2.I believe the author chooses the student as the target of ridicule because he uses the contrast between the student’s attitudes before and after to show that the student is a hypocritical person, not a selfless true lover.
3.Love is not useless. The ending of this story cannot negate the beauty of love, and the nightingale's selfless dedication in this process embodies the beauty and greatness of love.
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