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on July 27, 2021

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"Where you tend a rose..." (The Secret Garden)

"Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow." - The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett. Occurring at the end of a musing about the individual power of actively pushing out negative thoughts, this quote represents one of the main motifs of The Secret Garden , that happiness breeds happiness and misery breeds misery. One must actively encourage their happy thoughts to cultivate happiness . The literal meaning of this quote is that two things can't grow in the same place at the same time*, but with the relevant contextual information the metaphor is made clear: the rose, a delicate flower with pretty colours, in many cultures associated with love, represents the "good thoughts", while the thistle, a prickly weed**, is a metaphor for the "bad thoughts". Of course, being The Secret Garden , this message is conveyed through natural imagery. The almost-personification of these thoughts as plants that need tending emphasises the need to "th...

"Stars are so beautiful..." (Peter Pan)

“Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on for ever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was. So the older ones have become glassy-eyed and seldom speak (winking is the star language), but the little ones still wonder " - Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie. Between the departure of Mr and Mrs Darling and the active introduction of Peter and his invite to adventure, we briefly visit the stars, where the pervasive theme of the divide between adulthood and childhood is perpetuated, even into space! The personification of the stars in this way, even going so far as to give them an original sin and a language, sets the tone of magic, belief, imagination and fantasy for the rest of the novel. The widening of the physical span of Peter's world into space also helps to prepare the reader for the impossible and wonderful adventure to ensue. These stars, however, undercut the legend of ...

"Let us learn to show our friendship..." (The Great Gatsby)

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead. After that my own rule is to leave everything alone.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Said by Meyer Wolfsheim to Nick Carraway after the murder of Jay Gatsby, the former’s business partner and the latter’s “friend”*. On the surface, the first sentence is a wonderful quote and a great mantra to live one’s life by. The second sentence, again taking this at surface level, isn’t quite so great – what Wolfsheim means is that after the subject of one’s friendship dies, one ought not to get involved with areas surrounding them. However, it is incredibly important to allow yourself to grieve, in whatever way, and to ask people to “leave everything alone” after a death is to ask the impossible. However, we shouldn’t feel sorry for Wolfsheim here. He’s not asking the impossible of himself with his “own rule” – he wouldn’t grieve if he had allowed himself to. This quote from the busines...

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