Green is the color of spring, of growth, and of new life. If you’ve ever gotten lost in a captivating poem, novel, or story, you know that it can feel like wandering through a beautifully vibrant ecosystem.
That might make it seem like green is an ideal color for creating memorable literary symbols. Interestingly enough, not every great writer thinks so. You may already be familiar with Virginia Woolf’s famous quote regarding the color: “Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together, and they tear each other to pieces.”
Of course, whether “nature and letters” work together or not is a matter of personal opinion. Below are some striking examples of green color symbolism in poetry and prose.
Green Symbolism in Poetry
One of the best things about reading poetry is uncovering layers of subtext. Most poems have layers of meaning beneath the words — some are readily apparent, and others only appear after you read through the poem a few times. Here are a few examples of the color green shaping the meaning of different poems.
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost (1923)
Robert Frost is one of the most iconic American poets — even if you’ve only read a couple of poems in your lifetime, you’ve almost certainly heard of him. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” embodies some of the best qualities of Frost’s poetry: it creates a vivid picture of the natural world, it’s succinct, it’s accessible, and it imparts an important truth about life.
Unlike some contemporary poems, this one’s main truth isn’t hidden beneath layers of subtext. In essence, it’s a commentary on both the value and the ephemeral nature of life. Even the first lines steer the reader to this core truth: “Nature’s first green is gold,/Her hardest hue to hold.”
The comparison of “nature’s first green” (the first new shoots and leaf buds of spring) to gold isn’t about color. Instead, Frost is commenting on its value — the beginning of life is as precious as gold.
Of course, much of gold’s value comes from its scarcity. In keeping with the green/gold comparison, Frost notes that green (and therefore new life) is the “hardest hue to hold” — in other words, it doesn’t stay around for long.
If you’re familiar with other poems by Robert Frost, you know that “Nothing Gold Can Stay” is a great example of the genre Frost perfected: poems whose vivid nature imagery brings important truths to light.
“Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón (2017)
In the natural world (or at least in temperate climates), the reappearance of green is a sign of the coming of spring. That often translates to the color green being seen as a symbol of hope.
“Instructions on Not Giving Up” is a short but striking poem by Ada Limón that captures that association beautifully. It chronicles the coming of spring — how flowers bloom on the trees, and the petals fall down like confetti. And then how green starts to creep back over the world.
As with most poems about the coming of spring, this poem isn’t just about the coming of spring. The subtext rises to the surface toward the end of the poem:
Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty.
We can see from these lines that spring, along with the color green, is working as a symbol of perseverance through challenging times. Part of the beauty of the poem is its open-endedness — the speaker doesn’t specify, so “whatever winter did to us” can be whatever the reader wants it to be.
Maybe the reappearance of green represents healing from trauma, emerging triumphant after facing a major challenge, or finally seeing a bout of depression start to subside. Because green’s return is also “a return/to the strange idea of continuous living,” it’s a reminder that life goes on despite the obstacles we face.
“Cutting Greens” by Lucille Clifton (1987)
If you only pay attention to the literal meaning of “Cutting Greens” by Lucille Clifton, it might seem like a simple poem at first. It’s a short vignette about a speaker cutting greens in her kitchen. However, the initial description of the greens gives them an animate, human-like quality:
curling them around i hold their bodies in obscene embrace thinking of everything but kinship. collards and kale strain against each strange other away from my kissmaking hand
This characterization has a subtle eroticism to it. When you combine that fact with the vibrant green color of kale and collards, you might get the sense that this portion of the poem is a kind of homage to life itself. More specifically, the color green is symbolic of the pulse of life through the world.
As the speaker continues, the color palette changes from vibrant green to black. The cutting board, the speaker’s hand, and the pot are all black. The color change is striking enough as it is, but then the language shifts to show some motion: “the greens roll black under the knife,/and the kitchen twists dark on its spine.”
The combination of twisting/rolling and the color black are suggestive of death. We start to get the sense that “Cutting Greens” is a poem that captures the circle of life — or at least offers a glimpse of it.
That interpretation is supported by the poem’s close: in the final line, the speaker comments on “the bond of live things everywhere.” At least for a moment, she’s felt a kind of kinship with the rest of the living world — from fellow humans to animals to collard greens.
“The Green Car” by Landis Everson (2008)
Poems about dreams are hardly a new thing. But there’s something refreshingly different about “The Green Car” by Landis Everson, a contemporary poem that imbues a psychotherapy session with a kind of mysticism.
The speaker in the poem is talking to a psychologist, and we can tell he’s describing a dream even before he says it. The imagery in the dream is surreal, and it gives the reader the impression that the speaker feels out of control:
Defend me. I am not capable. The river sweeps by three minutes at once cleansing me of guilt. But the bear crashes through it and breaches my innocence. He rages and frightens my innocence.
In the dream, the speaker’s innocence is being attacked at the same time he’s being absolved of guilt. In the next stanza, the psychologist tells the speaker that he is both the river and the bear — indicating that the two entities represent a raging internal conflict.
However, in talking to the speaker, the psychologist includes a new image: a green car. He tells the speaker, “You are the bear./You are the river./You are the green car/crossing the bridge.” Why introduce a car to the mix? And why make the car green?
To decipher what the subtext of the green car might be, compare it to the other key images. You can’t control the movement of a bear or of a river, but you can control a car.
The car can serve as a symbol of the speaker’s personal agency. Green is a color of hope and newness, so the green car might be aspirational: the speaker wants to gain control, to defend himself from himself.
But in the next stanza, we see that the speaker is experiencing a sense of substantial disconnection from himself:
But the green car is in a forest I have failed to speak to. The green car was never intended to drive in that forest
Just as the speaker is aware that he can reclaim personal agency, he’s aware that the (metaphorical) green car is nearby. Despite the car’s relative proximity, he still feels disconnected from it. He’s “failed to speak to” the forest where the car has gone, and that forest is also somewhere the car never should have gone.
Essentially, the green car symbolizes personal agency and the self-assuredness that comes with it. Is it something the speaker can achieve? The poem leaves it up to you to decide.
Green Symbolism in Prose
Green symbolism isn’t limited to the poetry world. You can find this dynamic color in novels and short stories, too. And because pieces of prose are usually longer than poems, there’s more room for writers to create rich, multilayered symbolism. Here are a few examples of green being used symbolically in prose.
“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
If you do a quick search for green color symbolism in literature, you’ll find that a significant portion of the results mention the famous novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby includes one of the most iconic green symbols in American literature: the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock.
To understand the significance of the green light, you first need to understand what Daisy means to Jay Gatsby. Daisy is a debutante whom Gatsby fell in love with as a young man. Because Daisy came from a wealthy family, Gatsby pretended he was wealthy in an effort to win her over. When Gatsby went to fight in World War I, Daisy promised to wait for him. She didn’t — she instead married the wealthy Tom Buchanan.
Having never lost his feelings for Daisy, Gatsby is determined to try to win her back. He buys a luxuriant mansion across the water from the Buchanan home. There’s a green light at the end of the couple’s dock, and Gatsby seems enthralled by it. We start to get a sense of its meaning when Gatsby indicates the light is all he can see of the Buchanan home:
“If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,” said Gatsby. “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.”
The mist he mentions gives the image a dreamlike feel. It’s fitting — Gatsby’s wish for a future with Daisy is a distant dream. But like the green light, his wish is undying.
Since the end of the war, Gatsby has dedicated his life to trying to win Daisy back. His lies about wealth eventually become true — he makes his fortune bootlegging and possibly participating in other organized criminal activity. Despite his efforts, Daisy shows no romantic interest in him. She even allows him to be blamed for a deadly hit-and-run accident when she was driving the car.
Despite Daisy’s betrayal, Gatsby still wishes he could build a life with her. It’s not a coincidence that the light at the end of the dock is green. Green is the color of (American) money, and Gatsby relentlessly pursues money in an effort to impress Daisy. It’s also the color of envy, and Gatsby is undeniably envious of Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband.
At the novel’s close, the narrator, Nick, reflects on the green light and its meaning:
I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further… And one fine morning —
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
If the symbolism of the green light wasn’t clear earlier in the book, it is now. But Nick extends the light’s meaning beyond Gatsby’s life. It serves as a symbol of unreachable dreams that so many of us go to great lengths to pursue.
“The Green Door” by O. Henry (1906)
“The Green Door” might sound like a nondescript name for a story. But at its core, it’s about adventure. Rudolf Steiner, the main character, is exploring New York City when a man hands him a small piece of paper that simply says “The Green Door.” He sees that the man is also handing out pieces of paper with the name of a nearby doctor.
Rudolf walks by the man again, and he again receives a paper that says “The Green Door.” Taking it as a sign, he walks down the street in search of that door. He spots a green door and opens it, where he finds a young woman who is poor and hungry. He feeds her and promises to return to check on her the next day.
When Rudolf leaves, he asks the man handing out paper why he was handed the one saying “The Green Door.” He learns that the paper was an advertisement for a show at a theater down the street — and the theater is called The Green Door. He also notices that the hallway where the young woman’s apartment is is full of green doors, so he finds hers purely by chance. He concludes that “it was planned that I should meet her that way. I know it.”
So why is the door green? The story could be called “The Red Door” or “The Yellow Door” and have more or less the same meaning. But the green door works as a symbol, and we get a hint of its meaning at the beginning of the story, before we even see the green door itself. The narrator notes that there are “very few in whom the pure spirit of adventure is not dead.”
To the narrator, adventure isn’t true adventure unless the adventurer has no clear purpose in mind. Rudolf Steiner meets that definition. The spirit of adventure is alive in him, and green is probably the color most associated with life. Therefore, the green door is symbolic of adventure. The hallway full of green doors captures a beautiful worldview — that we have endless opportunities for adventure. We just have to pick one!
“Anne of Green Gables” by Lucy Maud Montgomery (1908)
“Anne of Green Gables” is a classic novel that tells the story of an orphan girl sent to live with a middle-aged brother and sister. The two had been trying to adopt a boy to help out around their sprawling farm, Green Gables. The orphanage sends them Anne by mistake, and they ultimately keep her and raise her as their own child.
As you might guess from the title, green is important in this book. Technically speaking, green is a motif — it functions much like a symbol, but it recurs throughout the text. Motifs generally connect to a central theme, and when you look at green in the novel, it’s a symbol of the sense of peace and well-being that Anne desperately seeks.
The name of the house that becomes her home — Green Gables — is the most obvious instance of green symbolism. The greenery of the natural world is also a sense of comfort and peace for Anne, as she says she’ll incorporate nature into her prayers:
I’m going to imagine that I’m the wind that is blowing up there in those tree tops. When I get tired of the trees I’ll imagine I’m gently waving down here in the ferns—and then I’ll fly over to Mrs. Lynde’s garden and set the flowers dancing—and then I’ll go with one great swoop over the clover field—and then I’ll blow over the Lake of Shining Waters and ripple it all up into little sparkling waves.
Relatively early on in the novel, we also see green briefly used as a symbol of (attempted) escapism. From the outset, we see that Anne hates having red hair, and she’s deeply embarrassed by it. She wants her hair to be deep, raven black. She dyes it, but the dye is ineffective — her hair turns green!
Elsewhere in the novel, green is a symbol of what Anne needs to have a peaceful, happy life. Her (accidentally) green hair shows us that Anne thinks changing her hair color will make her happy. After all, her hair doesn’t even turn a pretty shade of green: “Green it might be called, if it were any earthly color — a queer, dull, bronzy green, with streaks here and there of the original red to heighten the ghastly effect. Never in all her life had Marilla seen anything so grotesque as Anne’s hair at that moment.”
Fortunately, Anne’s hair eventually goes back to its natural color. She comes to accept it, and instead of trying to find happiness by changing herself, she builds meaningful connections with the people in her community.
“Everything Is Green” by David Foster Wallace (1989)
Lots of people know David Foster Wallace as the author of the ultra-long novel Infinite Jest. However, he’s equally skilled when it comes to writing pithy short stories. “Everything Is Green” is an especially short story that’s more like a vignette.
The story focuses on Mitch and Mayfly, a couple living in a trailer park. Mitch tells Mayfly that he feels their relationship is imbalanced and that he needs to focus on his own happiness for a bit:
I say Mayfly my heart has been down the road and back for you but I am forty-eight years old. It is time I have got to not let things just carry me by any more. I got to use some time that is still mine to try to make every thing feel right. I got to try to feel how I need to. In me there is needs which you can not even see any more, because there is too many needs in you in the way.
That seems like a great way to open a healthy dialogue about a relationship. However, Mayfly attempts to direct his attention to the greenery around them:
Every thing is green she says. Look how green it all is Mitch. How can you say the things you say you feel like when every thing outside is green like it is.
Mayfly is younger than Mitch, and her comment on “everything” being green is symbolic of a more optimistic worldview. As we learn from Mitch, there’s plenty around them that isn’t green. Mayfly either doesn’t see it or chooses not to focus on it.
In an observation clearly symbolic of his more realistic worldview, Mitch points out that many (if not most) of the things around them are not green:
The window over the sink of my kitchenet is cleaned off from the hard rain last night, and it is a morning with sun, it is still early, and there is a mess of green out. The trees are green and some grass out past the speed bumps is green and slicked down. But every thing is not green. The other trailers are not green, and my card table out with puddles in lines and beer cans and butts floating in the ash trays is not green, or my truck, or the gravel of the lot, or the big wheel toy that is on its side under a clothes line without no clothes on it by the next trailer, where the guy has got him some kids.
Mayfly’s view of the world is limited, but it focuses on the beauty in life. Mitch has a more complete worldview, but from his perspective, the negatives in life stand out. Many of the things he notices are far from beautiful: ashtrays, beer cans, cigarette butts, and gravel.
Mayfly’s relative optimism and her view of the world as being largely green are both central to the story. However, her name is rife with subtext, too. Mayflies as a species only live for a single day, so it’s fitting that when Mitch talks about his future, Mayfly changes focus to the present.
Even though the story is only a page or two, the disconnect in the relationship between Mitch and Mayfly is apparent. The story doesn’t explicitly say what direction the relationship goes in, but one of the last things Mitch says of Mayfly (“she is my morning”) implies the two will separate. Mayflies are ephemeral, and Mitch’s focus on his future suggests he will go far beyond his current relationship.
The Power of Green
As you’ve seen, green color symbolism — when done well — can add a new dimension of meaning to poetry and prose. Sometimes, the color means more than one thing. Whether you’re exploring the world of literature or trying to enrich your own writing, don’t ignore the power of green color symbolism!
Continue exploring and discover what all the other colors mean in literature.
