Symbol Analysis
Look—we love dancing roses as much as the next person, Shmoopers. At the same time, we know personification when it smacks us in the face. In this poem, roses, trees, cars, and trains are all endowed with human qualities. The effect is a different sense of the world, a hidden reality that our speaker's on to, but that we're clearly not.
- Lines 1-2: Can a flower truly have fashion sense? We doubt it. Here, the rose—naked or not—is personified to get us to think about the reality of the world we can see.
- Line 3: Those trees can be such jerkfaces, right? Why do they hide their roots, anyway? By making it seem like this is the trees' fault, the speaker's getting us to think about the way we all might be focusing on the final effects and neglecting the "root" causes.
- Line 6: That poor car—it's done wrong, but at least they feel sorry about it. By including this jarring personification, our speaker draws us into a contemplation that also involves us. What could our cars be stealing, after all? And if we're the ones who designed them, don't we share some of the blame?
- Line 8: We're not sure if we can think of anything sadder than a train standing in the rain (we like to think happy thoughts, gang). We're willing to bet, though, that this personified train's sadness comes more from standing around, acting very un-train-like, than getting drizzled on by a few rain clouds.