Rappaccini's Daughter

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Mrs. McGuirt RD essay 17 Nov. 2011 Poisonous Love The color purple symbolizes many diverse meanings. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” purple symbolizes mystery and arrogance (McGuirt). It also represents royalty, loyalty and cruelty (McGuirt). This color conveys death, mourning, and transformation (McGuirt). Purple is associated with spirituality, ceremony and the Christian Season of Advent (McGuirt). Hawthorne symbolizes these meanings of the color purple by expressing many various emotions between the characters in the way it is used throughout the story, ultimately symbolizing the different meanings and effects purple has. Purple is a hybrid color that results from blending blue and red. This helps to symbolize the purple shrub that is the guide marker to the action of the story. The purple shrub in the story is an ambiguous mixture of both mystery and arrogance. Magnificent yet poisonous, the plant symbolizes how Beatrice has her hold upon Giovanni and how it blinds his truthful knowledge about her, expressing his arrogance and mysteriousness. “Nor did he fail again to observe, or imagine, an analogy between the beautiful girl and the gorgeous shrub that hung its gemlike flowers over the fountain.” Giovanni fails yet again to see the person Beatrice truly is and her unusual resemblance to this purple shrub. “But now, unless Giovanni’s draughts of wine had bewildered his senses, a singular incident occurred…a drop or two of moisture from the broken stem of the flower descended upon the lizard’s head. For an instant, the reptile contorted itself violently, then lay motionless in the sunshine. Beatrice observed this remarkable phenomenon, and crossed herself, sadly, but without surprise; nor did she therefore hesitate to arrange the fatal flower in her bosom.” The mystery of how something as impossible as this could happen intrigues Giovanni and
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