Learning Paths » 5C Interacting
ULYSSES
DENOTATIVE ANALYSIS
The poem is divided into five stanzas.
The first stanza starts with a speaking voice who espresse his own opinion about living in the land he manages to see from distance. He says he wants to live in that country, because there people hoard, sleep, feed and they do not know him. Anyway, living in that land cannot take advantages, because there i san idle king; then the country is a bit in hospital because of barren crags.
The second stanza is about story life of the speaking voice. Here he explains to the reader why he cannot stop making voyages; he wants to drink his life, that means (from Tennyson's point of view) he searches his identity, so he will travel until he finds it. After some voyages, he became "a name", so he became famous, because he managed to win difficult and very dangerous situations, and he was beloved by people from different places. Ulysses is considered a legend, he also took part at the destruction of Troy. He is a part of all he has met, he i san active man, he does not like having a rest, because he thinks it is not honouring to rust unburnished. Ulysses continues to travel to find his own identity, first of all for him. Perhaps he already knows he will become a legend.
In the third stanza Ulysses returns to present life, and he introduces the figure of his son Telemachus to whom he will leave the sceptre and the isle, he will use slow prudence to make mild a rugged people and to subdue them. Telemachus is most blameless, decent not to fail and he will pay meet adoration to my household gods, when Ulysses will travel again.
In the fourth stanza, Ulysses thanks his mariners, who always followed him, in good and bad times. They lived his same feelings and emotions, he feels them like a part of him. The protagonist knows he is old, but he believes he still can have his honour and his toil, that is to travel and to discover new lands and to live new adventures. Death closes all, but he can yet do something of noble note before the end. He makes a last incitement to his friends mariners to remember old ages and to persuade them it is not last to leave again.
In the fifth and last stanza, he continues to incite them : much is taken, but much abides; and even if they are not young as in the past, they are what they are, that is heroes, strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.