Characterisation of other characters
Here we will focus on the collective character of the natural elements (lizard, butterfly, daisy and trees) and the secondary characters of the Student and the Professor’s daughter from the short story “The Nightingale and the Rose” by Oscar Wilde.
The Natural elements
Several natural elements add to the story’s fairy-tale features, as they are personified and act like humans.
The Lizard, the Daisy, and the Butterfly fill the role of the cynics and the realists in human society, as they cannot understand why the Student is crying over a rose, and implicitly, over love:
“He is weeping for a red rose,” said the Nightingale.
“For a red rose!” they cried; “how very ridiculous!” and the little Lizard, who was something of a cynic, laughed outright.
The “holm-oak tree”, fills the role of the Nightingale’s home and friend, as he is sorry to hear that she will self-sacrifice for creating a rose, and asks her to sing to him one last time:
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The Student
The Student is an important character in the short story because it is his love lamentations that push the Nightingale to help him. Apart from the fact that he is a philosophy student, his outer characterisation also conveys his physical traits from the Nightingale’s perspective: “His hair is dark as the hyacinth-blossom, and his lips are red as the rose of his desire; but passion has made his face like pale ivory, and sorrow has set her seal upon his brow.””
Inner characterisation
The young’s man inner characterisation presents him as being desperately in love with a girl whom he wants to take to a ball, but who has asked him a red rose in exchange for her company:
If I bring her a red rose she will dance with me till dawn. If I bring her a red rose, I shall hold her in my arms, and she will lean her head upon my shoulder, and her hand will be clasped in mine. But there is no red rose in my garden, so I shall sit lonely, and she will pass me by.
What is interesting and ironical about the Student is that tough he is wise in matters of philosophy, he cannot see that the woman he desires is playing with his feelings and demands things (the rose) in exchange for her attention and affection.
All the Student sees is how “wretched” he is. Still, the Nightingale believes his suffering is evidence that he is a “true lover”.
The Student is incapable of understanding the Nightingale, but he appreciates her song, though he believes it has no meaning.
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The Professor’s daughter
The woman whom the student desires is a Professor’s daughter whose defining trait is materialism.
From the beginning, when we find out that she asks a red rose from the Student to be his partner at the ball, the girl’s gesture strikes as conditional.
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