The Nightingale Symbol Analysis

“The Nightingale” is Isabelle Rossignol’s code name, which symbolizes her fundamental spiritual purity. Nightingales have a long literary history dating back to ancient Greece, and it also appears in the works of romantic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. In romantic poetry, the nightingale often represents the righteousness of nature. However, it also has some darker connotations, such as in John Keats’s famous poem “Ode to a Nightingale.” In Keats’s poem, the nightingale is still connected to the natural world, but it is also associated with death. This duel meaning carries over into Hannah’s novel. Isabelle is a source of fundamental good in the world, but she is also a tragic figure. For the majority of the novel, she is a fierce member of the resistance responsible for saving hundreds of lives. She carries out many escort missions at night, which partly explains the name “Nightingale.” However, the name’s more profound and tragic symbolism only becomes clear in the novel’s final chapter, when Isabelle dies shortly after returning home from a concentration camp.