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.
1. The nightingale symbolizes pure love and sacrifice, representing self-sacrifice. Roses symbolize love.
The image of the student embodies the conflict between reality and ideal, yearning to have love, but focusing more on practicality. Girls represent secular values, valuing material wealth more than emotional connections.
2. The author reveals the current situation that ideals are replaced by reality, and criticizes the trampling of innocence and beauty by utilitarianism.
3. I believe that love is useful, and its value depends on how you view and apply it. The love of the nightingale is a sacrifice without hesitation, and it treats love with sincerity; The student is not a true lover because he views love as a transaction. Love is not a tool or a means, it is an action, a noble belief.
Nightingale: A symbol of pure, selfless and sacrificial true love.
Red Rose: Symbolizes the idealized, precious and dedicated love itself.
Student: Symbolizes a utopian who is obsessed with theory and divorced from reality.
Girl: A worldly person who symbolizes money worship, vanity and disregard for true feelings.
Dusty tomes and philosophies: empty, useless book theories that symbolize detachment from life.
2. Why the author mocked these objects
The author's mockery is directed at the social ills of his time, and he uses these images to criticize the hypocritical values of the Victorian era. The students' empty talk and cowardice exposed pale and weak, a utopian; The girl's vanity money worship reflects that people's blind pursuit of material things in society is far better than cherishing true feelings; The dusty tomes and philosophies symbolize an academic system that is divorced from reality and unable to guide people to solve real emotional dilemmas. By mocking these objects, the author reflects the value of nightingale sacrificial love and calls on people to regain their faith in sincere feelings.
3. Is love " useful"? Can the failure of students prove that love is useless?
Love is not a " useful" tool in the traditional sense, but it has irreplaceable spiritual value. Students' failure can never prove that love is useless. First of all, the student's failure stems from his misunderstanding of love: he only regards the red rose as a " prop" to win the girl's favor, and never understands the sacrifice and sincerity behind this rose. In essence, his own utilitarian mentality leads to failure. Secondly, the sacrifice of the nightingale itself gives a noble meaning to love, which is not aimed at " winning hearts", but at clinging to good feelings, and its value is reflected in the process of dedication, not the success or failure of results.
· The Nightingale: Symbolizes pure, selfless love and artistic sacrifice.
· The Rose: Symbolizes the ideal of love, which requires great sacrifice (life's blood) to achieve.
· The Student: Symbolizes youthful, intellectual, but ultimately naive and impractical idealism.
· The Girl: Symbolizes materialism, superficiality, and worldly values.
2. The author ridicules the Student for being more in love with the idea of love and philosophy than with true understanding or action. The Girl is ridiculed for valuing jewels over sincere feeling. The great dusty book (Philosophy) is satirized as being disconnected from real human emotion and experience.
3. The story suggests love is not useless. The Nightingale's sacrifice creates something truly beautiful (the rose), representing love's pure value. The Student's failure is due to the Girl's materialism, not the rose's (or love's) worth. The story criticizes those who fail to recognize true love's value, not love itself.
1.ightingale symbolizes pure love, self-sacrifice, and artistic spirit, while the rose represents the beauty and cost of sacrifice for love. The student embodies idealistic love but also the powerlessness of knowledge, and the girl stands for worldliness, utilitarianism, and indifference to true love.
2.The student is mocked for appearing idealistic yet being actually utilitarian and weak. The girl is ridiculed for embodying the vulgarity and indifference of the real world.
3.I believe love shouldn’t be judged as useful or useless. If love starts with the intention of gaining something, it becomes utilitarian.
1. The nightingale symbolizes self-sacrifice, the rose symbolizes pure love, the student symbolizes idealistic love, and the girl symbolizes worldly utilitarianism.
2. The student represents the disengaged class, love divorced from reality, the girl represents material utilitarianism, and the philosophy book implies emptiness and detachment from genuine emotions. Wilde uses these characters to criticize the utilitarianism of society at that time and the materialization of love.
3. Love has no such thing as being useful or useless. It seeks no return and is a pure dedication and faith. However, both the student and the girl have secularized it.
I think the nightingale symbolizes romanticists like the author who pursue true love. The rose symbolizes pure and flawless true love. The student symbolizes those who only talk without action and deceive themselves. The girl represents those who do not understand true love.
The author mocks these things because he values romance, seeks true love, and despises hypocrites who use love as an excuse to justify themselves. In reality, they never understand what true love is and have never experienced it.
I believe love is useful. Although the student did not win the girl’s heart, it is because the girl did not truly love him. This cannot be used to judge love as useless. Life feels warmer because of love. Throughout history, countless literary works shine brightly because they are infused with love. Love enriches each day of our lives.
1.The nightingale symbolizes faithful love and a pure heart.The red rose stands for beautiful love.The student represents someone who knows nothing about true love.
The girl symbolizes a materialistic person who also doesn't understand love.
2.Each of these things has a distinct meaning.In the story, the author uses satire to portray the student: he weeps helplessly for lacking a red rose but does nothing at all; he fails to appreciate the nightingale's song and is indifferent to its sacrifice; in the end, he even throws the rose away casually and abandons love completely；The professor's daughter is more straightforward，she measures love purely by money；The student's thick book and his philosophy are actually objects of satire. He thinks knowledge is more practical than love and truly knows nothing about love. Through this, the author tells us that books and philosophy cannot teach us what love is.
3.I believe love is meaningful. The student's failure stems from their wrong understanding of love，neither of them truly knows what love is. True love can warm and comfort each other, serving as an unbreakable bond between two people. Love cannot be measured by money. It is long-lasting and enduring, not something that happens overnight.
1.The nightingale is the symbol of the idealism and the pure love, the rose is the symbol of the price of love, the student is the symbol of a false lover, and the girl is the symbol of a person who put the profit above all else.
2.The author uses the boy to irony those false idealists who fail to understand true love, uses the philosophy books to irony those who only seek shelter in evading problems, and uses the girl to irony those utilitarians.
3.Love is useful thing.It can cheer you up when you feel down and encourage you to go forward.
1. The nightingale:self-sacrificing love and purity
the rose:a symbol of true love and tragic devotion
the student:a superficial romantic,who is unwilling to do something
the girl:a materialist who values profit and lacks of romantic feelings
2.the student always talks about love but he even didn't do anything while the nightingale struggled to get the red rose.Afer being rejected,he threw the rose without hesitation and thought love is unless.At the end of the article,the boy decided to study philosophy,but the book was covered with dust.Obviously,the boy seldom read it.The author wanted to express that without reality, knowledge is also empty talk and can't create true love.
the girl didn't care the precious rose and refused the boy because the rose didn't match her dress.This exposed her utility and didn't know what is love.The author takes this opportunity to satirize the bad social atmosphere of measuring value by wealth.
3.I think love is useful,which represents priceless love.In the article,The rose failed to win the girl's heart,not because love is useless, but because girls don't understand true love.Love can improve your spiritual state and form a spirit of dedication
1. In the story, the Nightingale symbolizes true, selfless love and sacrifice. The red Rose represents perfect love born from that sacrifice. The Student stands for those who only talk about love but don't truly feel or act on it, while the Girl represents shallowness and materialism.
2. The author mocks the Student and the Girl because they represent empty values—the Student only knows love from books, and the Girl cares more about gifts than real feelings. He is criticizing people in society who are shallow and miss what truly matters.
3. Love is not useless, even though the Student failed. The Nightingale’s sacrifice shows that real love is beautiful and meaningful in itself. True love is valuable because of what it represents, not because it always leads to success.
1.The Nightingale symbolizes pure, self-sacrificing love. Her death contrasts with the shallow understanding of love held by humans in the story.The Student represents intellectual but emotionally detached rationalism. He values logic, books, and philosophy over genuine emotion and passion. .Other figures like the Lizard, Butterfly, and Daisy represent cynical or indifferent attitudes toward love—viewing it as impractical or foolish.
2.The Student is ridiculed because he claims to love yet understands nothing of true sacrifice or passion. He gives up easily and returns to his books when rejected.The Girl is criticized for caring more about jewels than a sincere gift, highlighting Wilde's disdain for mercenary values.Philosophy and dusty books are mocked because they represent a dry, lifeless way of understanding the world—devoid of feeling, beauty, or real human connection.
3. I believe that love is useful, pure and noble. The students failed to win the girl's heart because she didn't love him, or perhaps because she was materialistic. The rose is just an excuse for the girl to reject the boy. Love is the collision of two souls, not a comparison of appearance and power.
1. Nightingale: Symbol of sincere, selfless love
Red Rose: Represents pure, precious love that comes at a cost.
Student: Stands for bookish idealism about love
Girl: Embodies materialism
2. Wilde mocks them to criticize empty intellectualism and shallow values.
3. I think love is still useful.Love isn’t useless just because the student failed. His failure stems from his own shallowness and the girl’s materialism, not love itself. The nightingale’s selfless love is meaningful—it’s a testament to love’s beauty.
The Nightingale symbolizes sincere, selfless love; the Red Rose stands for pure, sacrificial devotion; the Student represents idealistic but shallow passion; the Girl embodies materialistic vanity.
They are ridiculed for prioritizing empty knowledge or material gain over genuine emotion, highlighting the hypocrisy of neglecting true love for superficial pursuits.
Love is not useless—its value lies in the Nightingale’s devotion, not the Student’s failed courtship. The story criticizes the misinterpretation of love, not love itself.
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