ULYSSES TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

In the present text, I am going to analyze the poem Ulysses written in 1833 by Lord Alfred Tennyson. It is inspired by Omero's Odyssey and Dante's Inferno: the subject is Ulysses, king of Ithaca, which battled in Troy and was famously remembered for his long and adventurous journey.
First of all, only by considering the title, we can easily understand who may be the subject of the poem. Soon, it is clear the intelligent reader may be right in his uppositions.
The poem is written as a dramatic monologue, which is spoken by Odysseus, addressed to an unknown audience. It seems like he is answering to someone but there is none in the poem responding to him.
Moreover, on the structural level, the poem is arranged into five stanzas, each one corresponding to a theme on which we will debate further.
The lines are in un-rhymed iambic pentameter which is exploited to make the speech more fluid and melodious. Many of the lines are enjambed, so the sentences often end in the middle, rather than the end of the lines. The use of enjambment is appropriate is coherent with the speech: “beyond the utmost bound of human thought", message of the novel. An example is: I will “drink/ Life to the lees” or the same “human/ thought.”

Looking at the first stanza, the intelligent reader will notice its introductory function, as a matter of fact, Ulysses talks about introducing himself as an idle king dissatisfied with his life. This sensation is evoked by the metaphorical use of the words "hoard" and "feed", which reveals he considers its subjects like animals because they behave only according to their animal instinct.
Going on, the second one, he proclaims that he “cannot rest from travel” but feels compelled to live to the fullest and swallow every last drop of life. The writer uses this metaphor to mean: living life to the fullest., there is also the alliteration of the letter "l", which makes these words stick into the reader's mind.
He has enjoyed all his experiences as a sailor who travels the seas, and he is the symbol for everyone who wanders and roams the earth to acquire knowledge, in fact, he portrays with the metaphor and personification of a hungry heart.
His travels have exposed him to many different types of people and ways of living.
They have also exposed him to the “delight of battle” while fighting the Trojan War with his men. Ulysses declares that his travels and encounters have shaped who he is: “I am a part of all that I have met,” he asserts. So, his past experiences make him what he is.
The reader feels a sense of loss for all the reading, in fact Ulysses misses traveling and getting to know new things, but it is clear that this has a deeper meaning. The writer dedicated the poem to his dearest friend Arthur Hallam, which introduced him to Dante's Inferno, and unfortunately died. The theme of loss is connected to the theme of death, the author wants to convey to the reader to go beyond the unknown.