She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways (Continuazione analisi iniziata in classe)

The personal intention to write an argumentative text follows the need to provide a possible reason for William Wordsworth’s decision to write – She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways -. Indeed I would like to explain why in my opinion the poet composed such lines and namely because he was fascinated by Lucy for some reason that is not explicitly made clear in the text. One cannot deny that the mysterious reason that explains for the poem’s composition in only hinted at line twelve, where the intelligent reader understands that Lucy’s death implies a relevant difference in William Wordsworth’s life. The very first name of the maid conveys a positive, illuminating visual image and it follows that the choice of such proper name make surely be significant in the economy of the text. The name adds an identity to the character and is intelligently placed in the last quatrain. The choice is meant to leave the reader with the curiosity about the young lady up to the end of the poem and as a result the reader is offered a need to go on reading.

If one likes analyzing literary texts her or she cannot help remembering Romeo’s words: “What’s in a name?”. The name is the person, since whenever you think of somebody you generally associate the person to a specific proper name or, in a colloquial language, to a nickname. However, the way Lucy is described makes the reader curious just like the poet seems have to be when she was alive. This effect is given by the comparisons the poet put in the text, they always present the girl as someone different from the rest of the world, she is a star in a sky, but she’s hidden to the eye: this could mean that she shines like a star, but she’s hidden among the mass of people who want to put themselves in the centre. The fact that she lived in “Untrodden Ways” announce a sense of distance and loneliness present all the text long, and the title it seems to me it is a sentence to remember her, so it arouses a sense of nostalgia: The title is extremely linked to the last stanza, where, as it has just said above, the reader understands Lucy is dead and feels down, sad for the poet. In effect, the last line underlines how important was Lucy for the poet, and when she died, the poet changed at all.

In conclusion, we might say this poem is distressing, but we can be sure it has been the right way for the poet to free himself from what he thought about Lucy and to tell the readers, or maybe only to tell himself, how special he was.