Alfred Tennyson’s Ulysses

Analysis [from line 1 to 17]

Lord Alfred Tennyson was a Victorian poet, therefore he was influenced by the utilitarian view of life developed in the period. Utilitarian and materialistic influences are clear right from the first lines of his dramatic monologue where Ulysses’ return “little profits”, using a term from economic field. Ulysses is an old man who comes back to his island Ithaca, but he does not feel at ease as shown by expressions such as “still hearth […] barren crags […] match’d with an aged wife” that suggest he does not recognize and appreciate what he has looked for to reach since the fall of Troy. Nevertheless, not only his wife and the island seem to annoy Ulysses, but he is annoyed also by citizens who are described as “savage race” because they behave as animals, doing the minimum to survive (“hoard, and sleep, and feed”). The expression “and know not me” that ends the first scene shows Ulysses as a stranger in his own country: he feels alone and misplaced.

The expression creates a link between the scenes: the second one explains reasons why Ulysses feels lost and marks a change in the rhythm of the poem. While words used in the first scene mainly suggest the idea of immobility (“idle […] still”) in the second one, words create a dynamic effect (“cannot rest from travel […] drink life to the less”). The contraposition and the expression “with those that loved me, and alone” display Ulysses’ mood: he is burnt from the desire to know and he does not care about other people because he accepts that to enjoy greatly it is necessary to suffer greatly. Then Ulysses recalls to his mind his voyages: his heart is “hungry” that is the reason why “much have I seen and know”; these expressions recalls to the reader’s mind the words used to describe the citizens of Ithaca who care only about to “hoard […] and feed” and who “know not” Ulysses showing once again that Ulysses feels more at ease away from his country. To better underline the concept while the citizens of Ithaca are described as a “savage race”, Ulysses remembers he met “cities of men…them all”. In the following lines Ulysses keeps on showing Ithacans as a savage race because he calls people who battled with him “my peers”.