Learning Paths » 5A Interacting
1. Read the poem through and say:
- who is speaking and to whom
Ulysses is speaking to his sailors
Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world. ‘t
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows - how old he is
Ulysses is so old.
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days - where he is
Ulysses is on the isle (Ithaca) but he wants to move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! - what he is setting out on
Life is not exist, life is joy, suffering and experience. He faces different contexts and situations, he not only met some people but he had got human relationship and experience, he seen and know through all this himself not least. He lived not only what he decided to see but everything (the reality) and he knew it. He says you are part of all you have met and that you must fight to be because there are two different ways to life: life or only exist.
2. Now read the text again: this time paying attention to the development of the argument.
Summarize what Ulysses says and feels following the guidelines on the left.
For each point consider also Tennyson's vocabulary indicating which words and phrases, in particular, reveal in the hero's trades and attitudes.
The first point as been written for you.
Life on Ithaca (1-5) | It is uncivilized and lacks excitement. Negative adjective such as idle, still, barren, aged, unequal, savage convey Ulysses' total dissatisfaction with life on Ithaca |
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His past life (6-18) | He says he cannot rest from travel: he will live life till the end because all time he has enjoyed and suffered greatly (moral adjective and real life) with people he loves, he says at sea he become a name. he always roaming with a hungry heart, he seen and kwon cities of man, and manners, climates, councils, governments (human experience and civilization) and himself not least, he is part of all that he have met (personal and positive experience) |
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View of the present and the future (19-32) | Present is a dull pause because to breathe is not life. At the moment it remains to him little from that eternal silence but he wants to continue to follow knowledge like a sinking star in future. |
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Attitude to Telemachus (33-44) | Telemachus works his work when Ulysses is gone: fulfils this labour by slow prudence to make mild a rugged people, and thro' soft degrees thro Subdue them to the useful and the good. Ulysses on the contrary continues to work his own (travel). |
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Address to his manners (45-70) | Ulysses and his sailors have free hearts and free foreheads, only death closes all: but something ere the end some work of noble note, may yet be done because even if we are not now that strength which in old days that which we are, we are; one equal temper of heroic hearts made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. |
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3. A. How is Ulysses portrayed in the poem?
To answer the question, consider:
- his present situation
he is on a dull pause on the isle but he is leaving because he cannot stay: he must move and travel, he wants life not just only breathe. - the contrast with Telemachus
Telemachus does only his offices and doesn't do experience, he is not himself and doesn't fight for to be it. He is carry by his destiny and doesn't choose. - what he can be taken to be symbolic of weather he differs from the picture we usually associate with the hero of the Odyssey.
Here, Ulysses is not just moved by the desire of knowledge and the will to go over it. He travel to see and kwon human and human being, to make experience and understand life through joy and suffer. It is a continuous stake himself.
B. What is the poet's attitude to Ulysses and Telemachus? With whom does he side?
For the differences I write before the poet sides with Ulysses. (Life is not to exist)
4. The poem was composed when Tennyson was still suffering for the death of his dearest friend Arthur Hallam in 1833. does the poem reflect a sense of lost?
Yes, it reflect the lost a past condition of human being that Ulysses wants to have again because it is his life and the present condition makes him pain.
5. As you will have realize the hero's feeling are communicated through a careful choice of words. What observations can you make about the meter and music of the poem and their relationship to his meaning?
When the poet speak about past life we meet friendly and peaceful sound, not only, even positive adjective and feeling. When he talk about the present condition it sounds like something stagnant while when he speak about past life (that is the same of present) he connotes it negative.