Tennyson's Ulysses is a perfect example of a dramatic monologue, the poem is spoken by a single character whose identity is revealed by his own words. The lines are in blank verse which serves to impart a fluid and natural quality to Ulysses's speech. Tennyson reworks the figure of Ulysses by drawing on the hero of Homer's Odyssey and the medieval hero of Dante's Inferno. Ulysses was one of greek leaders during the Trojan War, he is described as a wise, brave and crafty warrior. After many adventures and killing the suitors of his wife Penelope, he took his final sea voyage. According to Dante, Ulysses never returned to his island home of Ithaca after the fall of Troy, instead he persuades some of his followers to live new experiences and proposed a voyage of exploration beyond the strait of Gibraltar. Tennyson, on the other hand, pictures Ulysses in Ithaca some time after his reunion with his wife Penelope and his son after he had resumed the administrative responsibilities involved in governing his kingdom. The main character, returned to his homeland, finds a ”still hearth“, ”barren crags“, ”an aged wife“ and ”unequal laws unto a savage race“. In Ithaca Ulysses is not happy, he thinks that people are wild and savage because they don't have equal rules like animals. Tennyson creates a contrast between Ithaca and Ulysses's voyage: the first one is boring and characterized by rocks, barren fields and an old wife, while the second one more exciting and able to satisfy Ulysses's hunger to explore the untraveled world.

”I am a part of all that I have met; yet all experiences is an arch wherethro' gleams that untravell'd world...“In the following lines Tennyson presents Ulysses's concept of knowledge, by knowledge he means not only what a person has acquired during his life but the result of relationship between people, cities and experience. Experiences are compared to an arch which symbolizes both a way of time passing and a weapon which expresses the concept of fighting every day life. An important sentence is ”Life piled on life“, this repetition recalls the idea of monotony so it suggested the routine of every day. Ulysses still desires the part of world who has never visited because he is attracted by what he doesn't know. Curiosity so is the base of every form of knowledge. Ulysses so doesn't want to live in a routine life but to know and to expand his horizons. ”To follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought“ the most important thing is the knowledge of the world and the tension towards the space that characterized the voyage.

Then the speaking voice introduces Telemachus, Ulysses's son. He declares immediately that he will leave the power to his son because he is able to recognize in him the ability to understand what it is good and what it is bad. With the sentence the speaking voice again confirms that Ulysses cannot do that, he cannot spend his life to take care of other people. ”He works his work, I mine“. Last section moves the perception of Ulysses's reflection about the important of his life and the places that he would like to visit. ”The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed; Free hearts, free foreheads – you and I are old...“The reference to nature become symbolic to the little time Ulysses has in front of him. Everybody will get old but this doesn't mean that if you are old you cannot do lots of things, it is quite the contrary. The sailors, companions of Ulysses in this adventure, are represented as souls. They help the main character in his intent ”To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths; Of all the western stars, until I die.“ At the end of the poem Tennyson reveals Ulysses's nature, even if he is aware of the little time left to him, he has no intention to give up his dream of traveling until the death.