Thursday 20 May 2010
White Rose Flower
As we well know, “a rose is a rose is a rose”. But certainly, even among roses there is a hierarchy, or at least an ordering. Each variety has its own beauty; each color has its own meaning. The two most prominent colors are undoubtedly red and white. Two colors so famous for their meaning, red conveys passion, while white conveys purity. The stories of the red and white rose have long converged and diverged, most famously in history, in the War of the Roses, a late medieval fight for the British crown. Here, we shall leave the passionate red rose to her own affairs, and turn our attention to the more subtle white rose as the focus of our article. The white rose, which has undoubtedly been linked to purity for many years now, has come to represent much more. Christian symbolism has turned it into a sign for the Virgin Mary. In history, especially recent history, the white rose has become a strong political symbol, standing for truth and fighting totalitarianism, starting with the anti-Nazi German student group called the White Rose. White rose petals also manage to smoothly fall into the pages of prose and poetry, leading to beautiful lyrics and strong symbolism. Thus, the white rose, through its different meanings given to it by different ages of humanity, has come to be a strong political emblem, as well as a beautiful image that has been and will continue to be used in literature.
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