Tennyson’s Ulysses’ monologue

The poet write this monologue in a particular moment of his life, when died one of his close friend A.H. Hallman; Tennyson writes this monologue with the aim to create a tool to face the life.

Ulysses represents a myth and is associated to knowledge and the pursuit of it.

In this monologue Ulysses comes back from his voyage, he is an idle king and finds his homeland barren and his wife aged. The only actions he makes is mete and dole unequal laws to a savage race. By this first scene the reader comprehends the objective situation Ulysses fins when he comes home, but at the same time the reader guesses that the life he has not satisfy him.

Going on in the monologue using verbs of perception and existence Tennyson expresses perfectly Ulysses' will to travel and know. Ulysses is a very passionate man, he will drink life to the less. He has enjoy'd greatly and also he has suffer'd greatly, it means Ulysses is a man without half measures; the specifically use of this adverb communicates how he lives his life without restriction.

The Greek hero is conscious about his fame and notoriety, when he affirms I am become a name, he appears as presumptuous and arrogant.

Ulysses is for always roaming with a hungry heart, this verse makes explicit the wish of knowledge and experiences Ulysses has. In the monologue Ulysses develops also a inner reflection about what a voyage gives him. A voyage is the possibility to know the world and specifics regions with them own uses and costumes but also the knowledge of our self: Much have I seen and known myself not least.

Ulysses is aware that he is a case of experience, indeed he says I am a part of all that I have met.

Proceeding Ulysses reflection concerns his present situation, in which he can't express his essence: How dull it is to pause, not to shine in use.

His idea of life is expresses by the verb to live not by to survive, he can't bear a life in which to breathe is considered Life.

This part is concluded with the re-expression of a old Ulysses a gray spirit eager to follow knowledge.