Tolkien's Floral Fixation

[Faramir Jones]

Originally Posted by Guinevere

Another symbolic use of a white flower is Aragorn's comparison of Eowyn to "a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily, and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel. Or was it, maybe, a frost that had turned its sap to ice, and so it stood, bitter-sweet, still fair to see, but stricken, soon to fall and die?"

That's another good one, Guinevere! I've always liked the symbolism in that comparison since I first read that passage in LotR. It made me, at the time, think of a recently cut flower that looked fine, but which was soon to die.