Is Fruit really Good For You?

            Come, come all. Come read my paper. In Christina Rossetti’s, Goblin Market, the goblins are trying to lure the women into buying these fruit that will eventually kill them, but the women are blinded by how amazing and juicy they look and will eventually fall to the pressure and consume of the fruits. A lot of people connect a deeper meaning to the poem than just goblins selling fruit. I believe that the allegory of the power of sin and its effects is the most comparable to all of the previous meanings.

            In this poem, the fruits are extremely hard to deny just like sin. In this poem, you can see how troublesome saying no to the fruit is; even if they just lay eyes on the fruit, they start to fall into the trap and want to go buy the fruit. “‘Oh,’ cried Lizzie, ‘Laura, Laura,/ You should not peep at goblin men’” (Rossetti, 2). Lizzie was worried that Laura would fall to the charm that the goblin men used to trick people into buy the fruit even if she only looked at them. Sin is the same. You can watch people committing sin and you want to join in. Sin is a very contagious act because you can not see the harm that it can do until you have already committed the act. Once Laura started to look at the fruit, she then started to fall into the trap of the goblins. “Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,/ Down the glen tramp little men./ One hauls a basket,/ One bears a plate,/ One lugs a golden dish/ Of many pounds weight./ How fair the vain must grow/ Whose grapes are so luscious” (Rossetti, 2). The fruit is so mesmerizing that just looking at the fruit can cause the people to start thinking that the fruit looks better than any other fruit that they have ever seen. The fruit in this scenario is sin and we are all captivated by sin and we only see the good that can come from sin. This is one way that sin is portrayed in this poem.

            Whenever someone has tasted of the fruit that the goblins sell, they will fall ill and eventually die. Sin is something that people can fall into and fall ill and not have anything to save them if they continue to sin. “Do you not remember Jeanie,/ How she met them in the moonlight,/ Took their gifts both choice and many,/ Ate their fruits and wore their flowers/ Plucked from bowers/ Where summer ripens at all hours?/ But ever in the moonlight/ She pined and pined away;/ Sought them by night and day,/ Found them no more, but dwindled and grew grey;/ Then fell with the first snow” (Rossetti, 5).  Jeanie fell for the power of the goblins and then paid the price by losing her health. Whenever you start to sin, you fall to the temptation more often. The more of the sin can start to build on you and start to weigh you down. Until you start to stay away from sin, then can you be saved from the weights of sin. The fruit and sin have the same effect on people.

            After some one tastes the fruit, they have to have someone to help them recover. In Goblin Market, Lizzie helped Laura recover from her illness. “She cried ‘Laura,’ up the garden,/ ‘Did you miss me?/ Come and kiss me./ Never mind my bruises,/ Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices” (Rossetti, 13). Whenever we fall to sin, we have Jesus to help us to recover from our illness. Jesus fought all of the temptations and lived a righteous life so that whenever we go to God that our sins were paid for. Lizzie was like Jesus in this aspect that she went and fought the goblins so that Lizzie could be revived. This is another way that sin can be deeper meaning from the poem.

Whenever someone is being revived either from sin or the fruit from the poem, it is not a sudden revival. It is a long, hard journey but it is worth it at the end. In this poem, you can see that the road to back to recovery was not quick and painless for Laura. “That night long Lizzie watched by her,/ Counted her pulse’s flagging stir,/ Felt for her breath,/ Held water to her lips, and cooled her face/ With tears and fanning leaves:/ But when the first birds chirped about their eaves... Laura awoke as from a dream,/ Laughed in the old innocent way,/ Hugged Lizzie but not twice or thrice;/ her gleaming locks showed not one thread of grey” (Rossetti, 15). Lizzie watched Laura all night long and stayed with her though out the night to make sure that she was alive and well. Whenever we are being saved from our sins, we go through a period where we try and stay away from sin and it is very hard to stay away because we have gotten used to that way of living, but as Christians we look toward Jesus to show us how to live and we try and base our lives off of how Jesus lived and treated others. The sin and the fruit have the same effect on people and they both make for a long recovery time.

In Christina Rossetti’s, Goblin Market, there are many parallels between the fruits and the sin. They both act as an obstacle with how we live our lives. The goblins blinded the women’s thoughts and made them want to eat the fruit that they knew would make them fall ill. Sin also acts as an obstacle for us to get past to get to Heaven. They both require us to look for help in other people because we can not get over it by ourselves. They also both require a long and hard recovery. We find help with this recovery by way of Jesus, but Laura found it in Lizzie. This is why I think that sin is the most closest meaning of this poem.