The Blossoming Girl In The Hymn To Demeter

482 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: What do flowers symbolise in the text the flowers by alice walker

In The Hymn to Demeter written by…, Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, is abducted by the god Gaia to the underworld to be his bride. In order to do this, he grows a beautiful flower in order to lure and kidnap her. The flower is used as a medium for propelling the plot in the story. However, the flower is more than just a beautiful flower Gaia placed, the flower is a symbol of the deceptive nature of beauty and presents a theme of the blurred lines between the appearance of good and bad throughout the story. For instance, flowers represent purity and beauty. They are depicted as good and beautiful which is also seen through the description of Persephone. The author uses Persephone to emphasize the pure qualities of flowers by establishing a correlation between the two through the phrase “the blossoming girl”. During the first instance of the quote, she is shown picking these “lovely” flowers, conveying a tone of peace and childlike innocence. Not only that, but beauty itself creates an air of trust and safety which draws her …show more content…

This flower choice helps give clue to the hidden darkness beneath its immense and luring beauty. The flower narcissus comes from the tale where the young boy, Narcissus, looked at his own reflection and was drawn to its beauty which leads to his death. This flower is strategically used to foreshadow similar events in the story of Persephone. She was also drawn to the beauty of the flower and was then taken to the underworld which represents death. Also, the flowers she picked are described to be lush and carries a tone of life, whereas when the narcissus flower is introduced, it delivers her to the “Lord of the Dead,” bringing again that tone of death and malevolence in a seemingly good package. Therefore, the flower causes what seems good and what is good indistinguishable through the deception of

Show More
Related

  • Essay Comparing The Homeric Hymn To Pandora's Demeter

    1731 Words  | 4 Pages

    Comparing the Demeter of the Homeric Hymn to Hesiod’s portrayal of Pandora, each representation may, at first glance, appear as two entirely separate characterizations of an archaic wife’s role. A closer look at each story, however, suggests that the two women are actually made from the same substance, and each fulfills the same functions expected of women at the time.

    Read More

  • Jane Eyre vs House of Mirth Lily

    2029 Words  | 5 Pages

    word “art” which may imply something about the materialistic world that she tries to be a part of. Interestingly, and perhaps most symbolic, is the fact that the lily is the “flower of death”, an outcome that her whirlwind, uptight, unrealistic life inevitably led her to.

    Read More

  • Demeter By Edith Hamilton Literary Devices

    807 Words  | 2 Pages

    Demeter the daughter of Cronus and Rhea was the goddess of harvest and fertility. The poet, Edith Hamilton, reveals the sorrow of a mother who has lost a child in the mythical "Demeter." The speaker laments on the consequences the natural cycles will receive due to this suffering Demeter is experiencing. Edith uses imagery of dry land and loss to express the agony a mother endures when losing a child. Furthermore, the speaker uses allusion to explain the consequences the society is suffering.

    Read More

  • Flowers In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

    778 Words  | 2 Pages

    Flowers are incredibly important, especially in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. There are three main flowers pointed out in the course of the whole story. There are Miss Maudie’s azaleas, Mrs Dubose’s camellias, and Mayella Ewell’s geraniums. Each bloom was assigned in this way solely for the relation towards their corresponding characters. Flowers can be used to express emotion or send a message, and those associated with Maudie, Dubose, and Mayella are vital to the novel.

    Read More

  • Grief In Homeric Hymn To Demeter's Poem

    543 Words  | 2 Pages

    Being described as “like four goddesses” while Demeter herself is divine and yet, unrecognisable as such seems to hark back to their youth and beauty as a divine gift, while Demeter, in her grief, appears to lose divine status (Hymn to Demeter,108, 94-95, 108). Her grief is almost transformative, the lines “men nor… women recognised her when they looked” characterises grief as something that has made Demeter look human (Hymn to Demeter, 94-95). In travelling from Mount Olympus to earth, an action fuelled by her grief, she becomes a metaphor for a step-down in status from deity to mortal (Hymn to Demeter, 92-93). This reflects the implications of women losing their status as mothers and membership to a family in ancient Greece, when they either cannot bear children, or lose their children.

    Read More

  • Housman's To An Athlete Dying Young

    1640 Words  | 4 Pages

    and beauty are represented by a rose and the laurel, which are both subject to

    Read More

  • Demeter On My First Daughter And Romeo And Juliet

    1971 Words  | 4 Pages

    ‘Demeter’ is a poem about the story of Demeter. "Demeter was the goddess of harvest and Persephone was the goddess of springtime. Hades, the lord of the underworld, kidnapped Persephone. Hades fell in love with Persephone and asked Zeus to help him kidnap her so she could become his bride. The crops started to wilt and humans couldn't grow crops anymore. However Zeus told Hermes to bring back Persephone and to make sure she didn't eat any food from the Underworld. Hermes fetched Persephone. But before she left, Hades convinced her to eat 6 pomegranate seeds. Hermes made a compromise and said Persephone had to stay in the Underworld as Hades wife for six months. That's why there are seasons. In the fall and winter, Persephone goes down into the Underworld and Demeter mourns. In the summer and spring, she comes back and Demeter rejoices. " (1)

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Flowers In Toni Morrison's The Song Of Solomon

    637 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Toni Morrison’s novel, The Song of Solomon, flowers are associated with romance and love, and so the way in which the central female characters interact with flora is indicative of the romance in their lives. Flowers, red roses in particular, are a universal symbol for love and fertility. Though Ruth Foster, Lena called Magdalene Dead, and First Corinthians Dead are associated with different types of flowers in distinctive ways, the purpose of the motif stays the same; flowers reveal one’s romantic status and are a precursor for the romance that is to come. Throughout the entire novel, the flowers share in common that they are not real. Some flowers appear printed, others as fake substitutes, and some are imaginary. This is an essential

    Read More

  • Imagery and Diction in The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop

    1255 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fully bloomed roses conjure the image of a flower whose petals are at the stage of falling off.... ... middle of paper ... ... She creates, first, an image of the fish as a helpless captive and the reader is allowed to feel sorry for the fish and even pity his situation as the narrator does.

    Read More

  • Comparison: The Hymn to Demeter & Ovid's Metamorphosis

    898 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the Hymn to Demeter, the rape of Persephone starts with her picking flowers and she comes across the hundred headed narcissus which "Gaia made grow as a trick for the blushing maiden" (HHDem. 8-9). This trick is set into motion by Zeus, but since Gaia plays the role of protecting the youngest generation, this is a foreshadowing that Persephone's ordeal will be for a good cause. Hades moves in to take Persephone when the grounds gapes open and she begins to cry aloud. Demeter hears her daughters screams but she is powerless against Hades, hence the separation of distance between them. The grief stricken Demeter goes through an experience which plays out the role of a symbolic death. this is because the relationship between the mother and daughter ends at a wedding.

    Read More

  • Use of Symbols in Paul's Case

    831 Words  | 2 Pages

    Symbols are one of those most important things to a story. They share the meaning of themselves, as well as the meaning for something else. Symbols usually make the important ideas stick out as well as make the reader have different ideas of what is actually being said. One of the many symbols in “Paul’s Case” is flower’s. From violets to carnations, the flowers Paul talks about are ones of many meanings. The flowers represent a continual motif, expressing Paul’s character.

    Read More

  • The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

    661 Words  | 2 Pages

    The main symbolic image that the flowers provide is that of life; in the first chapter of the novel Offred says “…flowers: these are not to be dismissed. I am alive.” Many of the flowers Offred encounters are in or around the house where she lives; it can be suggested that this array of floral life is a substitute for the lack of human life, birth and social interaction. The entire idea of anything growing can be seen as a substitute for a child growing. The Commander’s house contains many pictures; as they are visual images, “flowers are still allowed.” Later, when Serena is “snipping off the seed pods with a pair of shears… aiming, positioning the blades… The fruiting body,” it seems that all life is being eradicated, even that of the flowers.

    Read More

  • Allusions To The Myth Of Persephone

    703 Words  | 2 Pages

    In two amazing poems, both poets make allusions to the myth of Persephone. The myth of Persephone tells of her kidnap by Hades, the God of the Underworld. She is then fated to spend one-third of the year in the underworld as Hades’ bride because she consumed pomegranate seeds. This myth appears frequently as a metaphor not only in “The Pomegranate” and “The Bistro Styx,” but in many others as well. In both poems, the myth of Persephone is used to symbolize the mother-daughter relationships.

    Read More

  • An Annotation of John Crowe Ransom's Blue Girls

    851 Words  | 2 Pages

    He describes beauty as delicate and rare, unable to be established. He focuses on the lightheartedness of young girls, how they are caught up in beauty, and he warns them to be conscientious of the fact that their beauty will fade and that they cannot put all their hope on their beauty. At the same time, he encourages them to "practice" their beauty until it is gone, and he promises to celebrate that beauty as best he can, with all its value and frailty.

    Read More

  • Popular Mechanics Raymond Carver

    577 Words  | 2 Pages

    The flower pot can both symbolize the happiness of the family or the beauty in the world, or even the family themselves. The flower pot can represent the family because as the flower pot broke apart, so was the family. He then goes on to illustrate how violence is a normal part of being

    Read More

More about The Blossoming Girl In The Hymn To Demeter

Open Document