What does the color pink symbolize? (in literature)?

Question:

What does the color pink symbolize? (in literature)?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

In literature, the significance of a symbol is always determined in part by the context: the way the novelist or poet handles the symbol. Very often, in fact, writers give an ironic reversal to the meaning of an image in popular culture.

In popular culture, of course, pink has a number of slightly related associations: a baby girl (rather than blue for a baby boy), hence femininity; to wear a pink ribbon is to support cancer research; to be pink-slipped is to not be rehired; to be in the pink is to be in a time when all is well; to see the world through pink glasses is to be optimistic, to see things in a "rosy" light; and yes indeed the pink triangle has come to mean homosexual pride.

Pearl Jam's song "Pink" has this message:

My motto in life...
Always tryi⴮ to do whatⴳ right,
Make everyone feel comfortable,
a chance to be accepted as they are. [1]

Then there are the poets in Canada who are making an effort to bring national attention to their work by driving a pink ambulance across the country. [2]

But in serious literature, the writer may turn such conventional imagery on its ear. Check out this poem [2] by World War I poet, Siegfried Sassoon:

In The Pink

So Davies wrote: ??This leaves me in the pink??.
Then scrawled his name: ??Your loving sweetheart, Willie??.
With crosses for a hug. He??d had a drink
Of rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly,
For once his blood ran warm; he had pay to spend.
Winter was passing; soon the year would mend.

But he couldn??t sleep that night; stiff in the dark
He groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm,
And how he??d go as cheerful as a lark
In his best suit, to wander arm in arm
With brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her ear
The simple, silly things she liked to hear.

And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudge
Up to the trenches, and my boots are rotten.
Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge,
And everything but wretchedness forgotten.
To-night he??s in the pink; but soon he??ll die.
And still the war goes on—he don??t know why.

Suddenly, being "in the pink" takes on dark, bitter, ironic dimensions: the false hope one has in bleak circumstances, the wretchedness of war, and the lack of understanding on the part of an enlisted soldier as to why he risks his life and ultimately faces death.

So what does pink symbolize in literature? Whatever the author uses it to symbolize.