John Smith
Ms. Reffel
Period 2
3 December 2013
Flowers Fade
A blooming flower is a fragile beauty. Its elegant soft petals only open for a few days
and then their beauty is gone forever. Once a petal falls, it can never be a part of that flower
again. For this reason, flowers are often used as a symbol for youth in literature. A symbol
in literature is when an author uses a common object to represent an idea. The symbol of a
flower is used to represent youth because both are precious but short-lived. Both the poem,
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost and the short story, “Love” by William Maxwell,
use the common symbol of the flower to represent the idea that nothing young and
beautiful will last, so we must appreciate it while we have it.
First, the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost clearly uses the symbol of
the flower to represent fleeting youth. In this poem, Frost compares the season of spring,
when everything is green and blooming, to the youth of a person’s life, when everything is
fresh and new. Frost claims that youth is like the “Nature’s first green” and that it is
precious like gold. Frost uses the symbol of budding flowers to represent the temporary
beauty of youth. He describes spring flowers saying, “Her early leaf’s a flower, But only so
an hour.” The flower is precious, but it will not last. Frost ultimately uses this symbol to
connect with the theme that nothing beautiful will last forever. We must appreciate spring
while the season lasts and must appreciate youth while we are young because both will be
gone before we know it.
Additionally, the short story “Love” by William Maxwell also uses flowers to
symbolize the idea that we cannot hold on to youth or beauty. In this passage, the narrator
recounts the memory of his charming 5th grade teacher, Miss Vera Brown. Miss Brown is
beautiful and young at the beginning, but she gets sick and stops coming to school.
Ultimately, Miss Brown’s illness overtakes her and she dies. Maxwell uses flowers to
symbolize her beauty and fragility. At the beginning of the story, the children decide to give
Miss Brown flowers for her birthday. The story says, “The class voted to present her with
flowers from the greenhouse. They took another vote and sweet peas won.” When the class
gives her the flowers, Miss Brown is delighted. She opens the box and “put her nose in the
flowers” to smell them. The flowers are beautiful and fragrant, but they are a gift that
cannot last. Like the flowers, Miss Brown’s health soon begins to fade. She stops coming to
school soon after he birthday and the narrator only ever sees her one more time, when he
goes to visit his dying teacher at the farm only weeks before reading about her death in the
paper. The flowers at the beginning of the story are perfect and beautiful. The narrator
would have liked to have kept the flowers like that forever, just like he would have liked to
keep Miss Brown as his teacher forever. However, flowers die and no one can stop them
from dying. The same is true with the young, beautiful teacher. Even when something is
beautiful and precious, we cannot keep it forever.
Clearly, both of these pieces successfully use the symbol of flowers to represent the
idea that youth is precious and beautiful but cannot last forever. Everything young and
beautiful must leave us. Usually, we are not ready to lose youth because it is precious to us,
but the loss of youth is unavoidable. Just as the boys were not ready for Miss Brown to die
and Frost is not ready for spring to fade, we are not ready to say goodbye to precious youth.
However, we have no control and cannot prevent death no matter how hard we try.
Therefore, we must focus on what we can control instead. We can decide to appreciate
youth while it lasts, because we never know how long it will last.