This poem is about “Braving the struggle of life” (SparkNotes Para. Ulysses “feels he is a victim of his fate that he and the mariners who sail with him must go through” (Shapiro 29). Finally, Ulysses reaches Happy Isles, the destiny of all the blessed after they die.
This reverberates with line 31 where Ulysses is ready to pursue knowledge to the end. Going nowhere in particular, they head west, “beyond the sunset, and the baths / Of all the western stars” (Tennyson Line 65). Ulysses finally leaves the island to “seek a newer world” (Tennyson Line 61).
#Ulysses by alfred lord tennyson full#
However, this is unrhymed iambic pentameter full of blank verses makes Tennyson’s writings peculiar. “Some critics have identified his apparent inconsistency in the narrative voice as a flaw in Tennyson’s presentation” (Shapiro 27). Ulysses uses words like “gloom’ in line 45 and he does not address a particular audience. After all, Telemachus has to lead the island, while on the other side, Ulysses sojourn in the seas, “He works his work, I mine” (Tennyson Line 43). He praises his son’s qualities of leadership. There is no compromise here and Ulysses has to leave his throne and hand it over to his son. He says, “This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I leave the scepter and the isle” (Tennyson Line 33-34). Ulysses starts addressing some audience concerning his son Telemachus. Ulysses cannot afford to just “breathe’ and pass through life quietly, he will, “follow knowledge like a sinking star / Beyond the utmost bond of human thought” (Tennyson Line 32).
Therefore, staying in this place will only add pity to his useless and unproductive life. The implication here is that Ulysses’ life is not only boring, but also useless as unsharpened sword. Life is ‘dull’ as per line 22 however, in line 23 there is imagery of unpolished sword. To this point, Ulysses decides to leave Ithaca and resume his adventures. To this, Shapiro posits that, “it grants Ulysses the glory of the legend that is associated with his name but it also reduces his existence to just one word” (26). There is unusual diction in line eleven when he says, “I am become a name” (Tennyson Line 11). The implication here is Ulysses is ready to “experience all things, good and bad” (Shapiro 26). “Drink life to the lees” (Tennyson Line 7). In line 7, the “lees’ refer to deposits found in the bottom of a wine glass. This form of structure is repeated in lines 11, 15, 17 and 18. Going back to line 6, the semicolon in “…travel “, is a structure that shows that Ulysses has more to say. This experience seems to have shaped Ulysses’ character greatly for he says, “I am a part of all that I have met” (Tennyson Line 8).
This travel as aforementioned, included fighting in the Trojan War. He says, “I cannot rest from travel” (Tennyson Line 6). Here Ulysses idolizes his travels condemning the act of staying in one place for a long time. The enjambment of this poem comes out clearly in this section. On contrary, this emanates from the fact that these two parties cannot match mentally, because “they know not me” (Tennyson Line 5). Towards the end however, it becomes apparent that neither the king nor his subjects are responsible for these shortcomings. “The only thing they do that might require human thought, the capacity to see beyond the immediate moment, is the greedy act of hoarding (Shapiro 25). The description here fits animal behavior. This king rules “barren crags” the wife is old and nothing seems positive around this place. It starts by “It little profits that an idle king /By this still hearth, among these barren crags” (Tennyson Line 1-2). The narrator comes out clearly with his discontent towards everything around him. The poem opens with Ulysses coming back home from after a thirty-year adventure which saw him take part in the Trojan War. For instance, lying to the natural divinities amounts to lying to the “civilized traveler.” Each section as aforementioned tackles a different idea. “Once the structure of this epic is revealed, the meaning of the episodes become intelligible as part of the narrative structure” (Shapiro 23). Most of the lines end midway in what Shapiro calls “enjambment” (20). The lines are unrhymed probably to enable flow of the speech. This poem consists of four sections-like paragraphs and each section contains a discrete theme. This paper looks into the structure and form of this poem from a critical point of view. He feels obliged to get out and face the world maximizing every moment. He says that, “I cannot rest from travel” (Tennyson Line 6). In this poem, Ulysses, addressing himself, declares that he cannot afford to stay at home for it is of little profit. Ulysses is a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson expressing dramatic soliloquy.
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