Why the Sunflower?

After completing the novel and my projects for the book, I couldn’t help but wonder why Wiesenthal named the book The Sunflower . Before I started researching what sunflowers are used to symbolically represent, I always thought that sunflowers represented happiness. I asked myself, why would a flower that represents happiness be a major symbol in a novel about the Holocaust? In the novel, Wiesenthal walks past sunflowers that are placed over Nazi soldiers’ graves, and is mesmerized by them. I didn’t think that Wiesenthal would find happiness from flowers planted on a soldier’s grave; it just didn’t add up to me. I looked online and found that the sunflower actually represents hope in a dark time. If you are interested in reading more on how the sunflower got its meaning, this link will be very helpful. After reading this website, I figured that the sunflower meant so much to Wiesenthal because he needed hope during a time as horrible as the Holocaust. These sunflowers were the only form of comfort Wiesenthal had, and this was probably why he made The Sunflowerhis title. This link talks about titles, and what makes them good. I believe that Wiesenthal did a great job of choosing The Sunflower as a title. It seems simple, but it has a lot of meaning behind it, and I believe that’s what most titles of novels should be like.