Few colors are used symbolically — in fairy tales and modern novels — like gold. It stands for riches, power, success, royalty, beauty, and even divinity. And just as it does in the real world, in the literary world, gold makes a statement wherever it goes, and its range of potential symbolic meanings is much wider than you might think.
Here’s a look at the symbolism of the color gold and how it enriches the meaning of poems, short stories, novels, and more.
Gold Symbolism in Poetry
Poetry is a genre that’s especially well-known for its use of symbolism. It’s also known for subtext, so sometimes, the symbolism itself may be multi-layered (or at least more complex than it initially seems). These four poems are great examples of how gold can transform your reading experience.
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost (1923)
Even if you haven’t read “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost, you might be familiar with the phrase. “Nothing gold can stay” simply means that nothing good or beautiful can last forever, and it lies at the heart of this particularly pithy classic. The poem is only eight lines long:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
The poem captures the cyclical nature of life on Earth. But one of its best qualities is that while it works beautifully in a literal sense, it has a subtext that travels far beyond the movement of the seasons.
In the opening line, Frost compares “nature’s first green” to gold. The comparison is more to the precious metal than the color (although the line might also make you think of golden leaves in fall or golden-yellow flowers in spring).
Gold is rare and precious, much like the ephemeral first green of spring (nature’s “hardest hue to hold”). In that way, both green and gold are symbolic of short-lived youth and beauty. While this poem celebrates the wonder of the world coming to life in spring, it’s also a sobering reminder to appreciate any beauty you encounter — because it won’t be here forever.
“Wild Horses Drink from the River of History” by Lois Roma-Deeley (2022)
“Wild Horses Drink from the River of History” is a poem that has some thematic similarities to “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” However, instead of focusing solely on the impermanence of this world, it juxtaposes the permanent with the ephemeral.
To really understand the symbolic work that gold is doing in the poem, you first need to grasp the significance of what happens at the poem’s outset. The speaker stops at a clearing where she’s often seen wild horses. Like most people would be, the speaker is intrigued by the horses. She says that she “wants to know their secrets.”
However, we then see that the horses are a central part of an imagined escape for the speaker. We get to hear her vivid daydream. There’s an allusion to pain and sadness, but her train of thought quickly moves on:
If I were brave, if I’d forget
to move past the brokenness of my own family,
I’d approach these unclaimed, unnamed creatures.
I’d stroke their brown manes,
feed them sugar apples and snow peas.
We’d share one fearless story.
It’s a brief foray into a fanciful world, and it’s an unexpected turn in the poem. After the horses are spooked by a helicopter (another unexpected turn), we finally reach the one instance of gold symbolism amidst this poem’s vivid imagery. It comes in the final stanza:
And the sun sets, dropping behind the mountain,
leaving a blue ridge, a dimming thread of gold.
I get into my car, head up switchbacks
that lead me to the open highway and down towards the city
where lights shimmer like the past of distant stars.
The image of a “dimming thread of gold” suggests something that’s both beautiful and diminishing. This brief but vivid instance of color symbolism can mean a couple of different things.
The first is a meaning similar to that of “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” This poem touches on the permanence of the river — it’s something everlasting that witnesses the constant change of everything around it. The mustangs, the helicopter, and even the speaker will one day fade, but the river will “flow on, relentlessly, carrying with it every story of who or what has come and gone.”
That fading thread of gold might also be symbolic of the speaker returning back to her everyday life. Her time with the mustangs is a kind of respite. As we saw earlier in the poem, she daydreams about joining the horses, saying that “we’d share one fearless story.”
But just like everything that surrounds the river, the speaker’s imagined escape into the world of the mustangs is short-lived. However, we get the feeling that it’s given her a sense of new perspective, even peace. Just as she drives toward the city (and metaphorically, toward the future), the speaker gains a sense of her place in a vast world. Even as she drives toward the bright city lights, they remind her of the ancient river — they “shimmer like the past of distant stars.”
“To a Young Dancing Girl” by Elsa Gidlow (1923)
In many different literary genres, gold is a symbol of riches or royalty. However, it has a somewhat less common symbolic meaning, too: it’s sometimes used to signify youth. It’s used this way to an extent in “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” but it’s a much more explicit symbol of youth in Elsa Gidlow’s 1923 poem, “To a Young Dancing Girl.”
The theme of this poem is a fairly universal one: it’s easy to feel bright, happy, and optimistic as a young person. But the longer a person lives, the more they see the darkness in the world.
This poem’s speaker is someone who is all too familiar with the darkness and despair that often reveal themselves as life wears on. She notes that “shadows matter little to youth with dancing feet/All of Life’s skeletons wear gay dresses/And youth is deceived by even Death’s caresses.”
As you might infer from the title, this poem is addressed to a young girl whose view of the world has not yet been marred by experience. The speaker addresses her as “Golden-eyed girl.” It’s a key symbol here. The poem is only around 20 lines long, but the speaker addresses the girl as “Golden-eyed girl” four times.
Repetition is important in any work of literature. But in poetry — a genre where economy of words is particularly important — it has extra significance. The moniker is a kind of shorthand for the short-sightedness of youth. And by the last stanza, the speaker’s warning to the girl is more explicit than ever before:
Golden-eyed girl, you have years to dance and wonder
Before your Life’s curtain will wear into holes
And let you see the hopelessness hidden in souls.
You have many moons of laughter, many years to go
Before you’ll learn how heavy dancing feet can grow.
Even though the speaker is warning the young girl about what life has in store, the poem doesn’t come off as being preachy. Instead, it’s an insight offered by someone who was once young but has now been worn down by life.
“Golden Valley” by Randy Blasing (1987)
“Golden Valley” might be a short poem (it’s only 24 lines), but it covers a surprising amount of ground. The mention of the Soo Line (a railroad) makes it clear that the poem is set in Golden Valley, Minnesota. Even though Golden Valley is a place, gold color symbolism comes into play here. And just as it is in some of the poems above, gold is working as a symbol of youth.
From the beginning of the poem, we can tell that gold is going to play a significant symbolic role. Immediately after the title, the color is mentioned again — this time as the color of goldenrod, a bright plant infamous for triggering allergy symptoms:
My first night there I couldn't sleep
from all the goldenrod I'd sniffed
playing war until it got dark
Gold appears later on, this time as the color of the foliage on the trees spared by the bulldozers. It’s the beginning part of the vivid, final image that concludes the poem:
Caterpillars had leveled Noble Grove
for our development, but across the tracks
the woods—beeches, maples, oaks—remained standing.
Later, when they were stripped of green & gold
& snow fell as if for good, the charred trees
our picture window displayed like a page
of upright characters showed me
how to absorb the losses mounting daily,
the red ink in our blood, & come
out burnt yet in the black
someday, letter-perfect
when everything was said & done.
“Golden Valley” is a poem that touches on themes of the disillusionment that inevitably comes with age. The goldenrod mentioned earlier grows “in the still-wild valley below our house.” That kind of bright, youthful hope persists in the green and gold leaves of the far-off trees, even though the trees closest to the speaker were destroyed long ago.
The gold on the trees is emblematic of the last traces of youthful optimism, so when the speaker notes that the snow falls “as if for good,” it might seem as though the poem will wind its way down to despair.
Instead, the opposite happens. The trees have lost their vibrant colors, but they’re a kind of lesson for the speaker. They remain upright despite their bereftness, and they show the speaker “how to absorb the losses mounting daily.” It’s a strategy the speaker says taught him how to “come/out burnt yet in the black” (meaning how to make it through life successfully despite being damaged).
“In the black” is typically used in the business world to denote that a company is making a profit. This reference ties back to the speaker’s earlier mention of how, as a child, he “vowed to make/life my business.” The poem comes full circle, with the speaker’s resilience buoyed by the brightness of youth and the richness of experience.
Gold Symbolism in Prose
For many of us, the first experience we have with gold color symbolism in literature is with prose. You might remember reading “The Golden Goose” or feeling a burst of delight when Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory wins a Golden Ticket. Here are four great stories that use gold color symbolism.
“The Gold-Bug” by Edgar Allan Poe (1843)
“The Gold-Bug” may not be Edgar Allan Poe’s best-known story right now, but during his lifetime, it was likely the most popular. “The Gold-Bug” won a contest offered by the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper.
If you aren’t already familiar with “The Gold-Bug,” the story’s name is a literal one: it centers around William Legrand, a once-wealthy man who moved to Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina after losing his fortune. He came with Jupiter, a man who had once been enslaved by Legrand’s family. Jupiter chose to stay with Legrand even after he was freed, and the narrator (Legrand’s doctor and friend) suspects that the family may have persuaded him to do so, as they understood that Legrand was not entirely mentally well.
At the beginning, Legrand is excited to tell the narrator about a bug he’s found. It’s “of a brilliant gold color — about the size of a large hickory-nut — with two jet black spots near one extremity of the back, and another, somewhat longer, at the other.” The bug is heavy enough that Jupiter seems to think it’s made of solid gold. Legrand is also convinced that the bug is the key to regaining his fortune.
Later, Legrand sends for the narrator, insisting he come along on an expedition. As it turns out, Legrand was right about the bug in a roundabout way. We learn that early in the story, Jupiter picked up the bug in a scrap of paper. Legrand took the scrap and found invisible ink that appeared with heat. The ink spelled out a cipher, and Legrand solved it. Legrand, Jupiter, and the narrator follow the cipher to a specified spot. They begin to dig, where they find a box:
On each side of the chest, near the top, were three rings of iron — six in all — by means of which a firm hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united endeavors served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed. We at once saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight. Luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding bolts. These we drew back — trembling and panting with anxiety. In an instant, a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before us. As the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed upwards a glow and a glare, from a confused heap of gold and of jewels, that absolutely dazzled our eyes.
When the three take inventory, they find antique gold coins from France, England, Spain, and Germany, as well as watches and jewels.
So how does symbolism work here? It’s more straightforward than in most of the poems we’ve explored. The gold bug is, of course, a symbol of wealth and good fortune (although Legrand’s fascination with it may be symbolic of the almost-rabid fixation some people have on money). It also foreshadows the discovery. The story would still make sense if the bug were black, blue, or green (because it’s the cipher on the paper that ultimately leads to the treasure), but the creature’s metallic brilliance gives us a hint of what’s to come.
“Trap of Gold” by Louis L’Amour (1951)
Louis L’Amour’s “Trap of Gold” might be classified as a Western story, but you don’t have to be a fan of the genre to appreciate the subtext of wisdom and warning. This short story follows Wetherton, a skilled gold miner, as he discovers a promising band of quartz veined with gold. However, as we soon see, there’s a problem:
The vein itself lay on the downhill side and at the very base. The outer wall of the upthrust was sharply tilted so that a man working at the vein would be cutting his way into the very foundations of the tower, and any single blow of the pick might bring the whole mass down upon him. Furthermore, if the rock did fall, the vein would be hopelessly buried under thousands of tons of rock and lost without the expenditure of much more capital than he could command. And at this moment Wetherton‘s total of money in hand amounted to slightly less than forty dollars.
It’s an age-old conundrum: there’s an opportunity for great wealth that comes with enormous risk. But for someone with very little money, the chance is too great to pass up. Wetherton is a cautious person who doesn’t like to gamble, so he doesn’t immediately start. It’s clear that he understands how critically important it is for him not to become too greedy:
In the present operation he was taking a careful calculated risk in which every eventuality had been weighed and judged. He needed the money and he intended to have it; he had a good idea of his chances of success, but knew that his gravest danger was to become too greedy, too much engrossed in his task.
This is a story where gold plays a clear symbolic role. It can, of course, be a symbol of money, but it also might be a symbol of ambition or of anything that, if pursued to excess, can be harmful.
Wetherton works on the vein, each day cutting a little deeper into the tower. He begins to hear the sound of the tower moving or shifting, and it scares him. However, the deeper he cuts, the more gold he sees, and he decides to keep going.
L’Amour makes it clear that Wetherton isn’t a miser or someone who’s simply crazed by the promise of wealth. We learn that Wetherton has a wife, Laura, and a son, Tommy. He knows that if he earns enough, they can purchase their own home and have an easier life. They can also afford to provide an education for Tommy.
Wetherton’s sense of perspective when it comes to gold/wealth is illustrated when he looks closely at the rock he’s mining: “The gold showed bright and beautiful in the crystalline quartz, which was so much more beautiful than the gold itself.” Essentially, he appreciates the importance of money (the gold), but he sees that family and other meaningful parts of life (the quartz) are much more beautiful.
Even with that perspective and appreciation, Wetherton still comes dangerously close to falling under the spell of riches: “Now the lust of the gold was getting into him, taking him by the throat.” He has some close calls with the tower’s shifting, but he’s drawn back time and time again. Ultimately, he is able to do what not every person can: he defeats his greed. He hesitates before leaving, but it’s the thought of his family that finalizes the decision for him:
He would go no farther. Now he would quit. Not another sackful. Not another pound. He would go out now. He would go down the mountain without a backward look, and he would keep going. His wife waiting at home, little Tommy, who would run gladly to meet him—these were too much to gamble.
“The Capital of the World” by Ernest Hemingway (1936)
Hemingway’s “The Capital of the World” is a brief, very sad story about disillusionment. Gold is only briefly mentioned, but it carries a good bit of symbolic weight. The story centers around Paco, a boy who has moved to Madrid in hopes of being a bullfighter. He works at the Luarca, a hotel that houses three second-rate bullfighters — some of whom were once great. Hemingway profiles three of them in some detail: one was great until he was gored by a bull’s horn, one has fallen ill, and the other never reached the heights of success he had hoped to.
The omniscient narration in the story gives us insight into the key characters’ thoughts, and it’s in one of these characters’ thoughts that we see the first instance of gold color symbolism. When the matador who was once great reminisces about his career, the fighting jacket adorned with gold is a symbol of the glory he once had: “He could remember when he had been good and it had only been three years before. He could remember the weight of the heavy gold-brocaded fighting jacket on his shoulders on that hot afternoon in May when his voice had still been the same in the ring as in the cafe.” The traditional gold fighting jacket is a symbol for the other bullfighters, too, and we learn that the bullfighter who is ill has begun selling his.
Just as these bullfighters are accepting the fact that their days of glory are behind them, Paco is dreaming of the glory days he hopes are ahead. He fights imaginary bulls using a napkin as a cape and pictures himself as a successful bullfighter:
He had done it too many times in his imagination. Too many times he had seen the horns, seen the bull’s wet muzzle, the ear twitching, then the head go down and the charge, the hoofs thudding and the hot bull pass him as he swung the cape, to re-charge as he swung the cape again, then again, and again, and again, to end winding the bull around him in his great media-verónica, and walk swingingly away, with bull hairs caught in the gold ornaments of his jacket from the close passes; the bull standing hypnotized and the crowd applauding. No, he would not be afraid. Others, yes. Not he. He knew he would not be afraid. Even if he ever was afraid he knew that he could do it anyway. He had confidence.
Again, it’s the gold-brocaded jacket — and the color gold itself — that stands as the most vivid symbol of bravery, prestige, and success. It’s easy to find yourself rooting for Paco, hoping he’s able to realize that dream.
Enrique, the dishwasher who works with Paco, doubts Paco’s assertion that he would not be afraid if he got into the ring with a bull. Enrique proposes a test: he’ll create a mock bull by tying two meat knives (to mimic the horns) to the legs of a chair and then holding the chair in front of his head. Paco will test his bullfighting moves as Enrique, carrying the chair, acts as the bull. Enrique has a change of heart — he came up with the idea to show Paco how dangerous bullfighting is, but he starts to realize it’s too dangerous. Paco insists that they go through with the plan:
Running with head down Enrique came toward him and Paco swung the apron just ahead of the knife blade as it passed close in front of his belly and as it went by it was, to him, the real horn, white-tipped, black, smooth, and as Enrique passed him and turned to rush again it was the hot, blood-flanked mass of the bull that thudded by, then turned like a cat and came again as he swung the cape slowly. Then the bull turned and came again and, as he watched the onrushing point, he stepped his left foot two inches too far forward and the knife did not pass, but had slipped in as easily as into a wineskin and there was a hot scalding rush above and around the sudden inner rigidity of steel and Enrique shouting. “Ay! Ay! Let me get it out! Let me get it out!” and Paco slipped forward on the chair, the apron cape still held, Enrique pulling on the chair as the knife turned in him, in him, Paco.
Paco never gets the chance to wear the spectacularly gilded jacket of a true matador. The contrast between his dream and his reality is painfully clear. As Enrique runs for a doctor and Paco is alone and bleeding, he recalls that “in the ring they lifted you and carried you, running with you, to the operating room. If the femoral artery emptied itself before you reached there they called the priest.”
Just as Paco still keeps a tenuous hold on his dream, he clutches the apron he used as a cape even as he begins to lose consciousness. In moments, he bleeds out on the floor, dying along with his dream.
“My Aunt Gold Teeth” by V. S. Naipaul (1958)
This story is part of a collection of short stories called “A Flag on the Island” by V. S. Naipaul. Even before you start reading, the strange title of “My Aunt Gold Teeth” is enough to grab your attention. When most people think of gold teeth, they picture rappers. However, the gold teeth here are worn by the narrator’s aunt, a Hindu woman living in Trinidad:
I never knew her real name and it is quite likely that she did have one, though I never heard her called anything but Gold Teeth. She did, indeed, have gold teeth. She had sixteen of them. She had married early and she had married well, and shortly after her marriage she exchanged her perfectly sound teeth for gold ones, to announce to the world that her husband was a man of substance.
Even without her gold teeth my aunt would have been noticeable. She was short, scarcely five foot, and she was fat, horribly, monstrously fat. If you saw her in silhouette you would have found it difficult to know whether she was facing you or whether she was looking sideways.
Right away, we can see that — for reasons other than her gold teeth — the narrator’s aunt is someone who stands out from the crowd. It quickly becomes evident that the teeth, while intended as a symbol of status, are also a symbol of her refusal to be limited to a single belief system. Her gold teeth, her weight, and her childlessness mean that she doesn’t fit the Hindu conception of femininity. And paradoxically enough, even though her husband is a faith leader and Gold Teeth claims to be an orthodox Hindu, we learn that “of Hinduism she knew little apart from the ceremonies and the taboos, and this was enough for her.” And because she’s desperate to have a child, she’s willing to pray to both Hindu and Christian deities.
Similarly, when Gold Teeth’s husband becomes ill, she’s willing to try both medical and religious remedies:
Ramprasad’s sudden, unaccountable illness alarmed Gold Teeth. It was, she knew, no ordinary illness, and she knew too that her religious transgression was the cause. The District Medical Officer at Chaguanas said it was diabetes but Gold Teeth knew better. To be on the safe side, though, she used the insulin he prescribed, and, to be even safer, she consulted Ganesh Pundit, the masseur with mystic leanings, celebrated as a faith-healer.
Throughout this entertaining story, it’s possible to simultaneously sympathize with Gold Teeth’s loss and laugh at her utter ridiculousness. And the gold teeth themselves — being at once both deeply symbolic and comically absurd — are a fitting symbol to include in this memorable tragicomedy.
Finding the Gold in a Rainbow of Literature
Whether you love the glittering, otherworldly glow of gold or find it to be simply too ostentatious, this color is one that nearly always comes with powerful symbolic meaning. The next time you come across it in poetry or fiction, take a closer look — you might be surprised at how it can enrich a text!
Continue exploring and discover what all the other colors mean in literature.
