In “The Pomegranate Seeds,” the goddess Ceres searches the world for her daughter, Proserpina, using the light of her torch. The torch’s ever-burning flame symbolizes Ceres’s commitment to finding her daughter, a mission fueled by her deep, motherly love. Hawthorne describes how Ceres, exhausted and preoccupied with worry for her daughter, never even put the torch out at night. He implies that it was imbued with the power of Ceres’s love, as it burned continually:

But I wonder what sort of stuff this torch was made of; for it burned dimly through the day, and, at night, was as bright as ever, and never was extinguished by the rain or wind, in all the weary days and nights while Ceres was seeking for Proserpina (72).

Ceres takes her torch with her everywhere she goes, including the neighboring farms, Hecate’s cave, Phoebus’s home in the clouds, and on her journeys to find an entrance to the underworld. Hawthorne writes, “Poor Mother Ceres! It is melancholy to think of her, pursuing her toilsome way, all alone, and holding up that never-dying torch, the flame of which seemed an emblem of the grief and hope that burned together in her heart” (76). As something that Ceres always carries with her, the torch is a physical reminder of her determination to find her daughter. At the end of the tale, Ceres’s inner thoughts reinforce this symbolism, revealing that the torch was indeed magical, as it held a flame until her reunion with Proserpina. When she sees its flame extinguish, she exclaims, “It was an enchanted torch, and should have kept burning till my child came back” (82). A moment later, Ceres sees Proserpina running toward her.