How to Write About Poetry

• 1. Who is the speaker? What kind of person is the speaker?

  He is the Greek hero Ulysses. He has traveled as a warrior and adventurer for most of his life and longs to return to that life since he feels stifled at home. Tennyson represents Ulysses as an intellectually curious man, a man heroic in his unending quest to know. He seems to disapprove of materialism of the Ithacans. In this poem he regards Penelope, his wife, as agéd, too old to participate in his quest on any level. He regards his son as one fitted for the stationary life of one who serves - even if in a noble cause.

• 2. Is there an identifiable audience for the speaker? What can we know about it (her, him, or them)?

  In section 1 Ulysses addresses only himself as he mulls over his current situation.

  Section 2 seems more like an address to the council since in it Ulysses explains his plans for the administration - and “modernization” - of the population of Ithaca.

  In section 3 he specifically addresses “My mariners,” those who would venture forth on the kind of quest Ulysses seeks.

• 3. What is the occasion?

  Ulysses has grown bored with domestic life and the routines of kingship.

• 4. What is the setting in time (hour, season, century, and so on)?

  It is sometime after Ulysses’ triumphant return from Troy and his ten years of wandering the Mediterranean world,

• 5. What is the setting place (indoors or out, city or country, land or sea, region, nation, hemisphere)?

  I imagine Ulysses on a crag overlooking the harbor of Ithaca where he may see the world around him and the horizon beyond which lies the unknown.

• 6. What is the central purpose of the poem?

  Ulysses, after mulling over his situation and reminiscing about his past life, seeks to move his former companions to join him in one more foray into the unknown so that they may learn what no one has known before them.

• 7. State the central idea or theme of the poem in a sentence.

  The life of intellectual pursuits may be the most adventurous life.

• 8. What is the tone of the poem? How is it achieved?

  The first section takes a tone of restlessness and distaste for domestic life.

  The second section offers a tone of celebratory reminiscence and hopefulness.

  The third section moves to a persuasive tone intended to incite action.

• 9.

  • a. Outline the poem so as to show its structure and development, or

  • b. Summarize the events of the poem.

    Section 1 establishes Ulysses’s sense of futility in his office as king of Ithaca. He longs for the quest (for knowledge), but he finds himself immersed in the materialistic limits of the Ithacans who “hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.”

    Section 2 explains his plans for the administration - and “modernization” - of the population of Ithaca.

    Section 3 serves as a rallying speech during which he works to build interest in his final quest.

• 10. Paraphrase the poem. (Word process separately or type into your Palm Pilot.)

• 11. Discuss the diction of the poem. Point out words that are particularly well chosen and explain why.

  Lines 26 - 29 tell us that every hour of life brings new experience, new knowledge. (Grammatically, the subject to of “is saved” is probably to be construed as “something more,” with a bringer of new things” in apposition and “every hour” treated as an adverbial modifier, but the ambiguity of the construction suggests the wisdom of saving every hour possible from death, of living as long as possible in order to lean new things.)

• 12. Discuss the imagery of the poem. What kinds of imagery are used? Is there a structure of imagery?

  The image in lines 18 - 21 includes the idea of a horizon that is always to be sought, never to be reached - that is, the idea of knowledge that is never to be exhausted.

• 13. Point out examples of metaphor, simile, personification, and metonymy, and explain their appropriateness.

  “Hearts” and “foreheads” (49) are metonymies for wills and minds (the meaning is “We confronted the thunder and the sunshine with free wills and free minds”).

• 14. Point out and explain any symbols. If the poem is allegorical, explain the allegory.

  Ulysses represents and recommends a life of continuous intellectual aspiration, he has an avid thirst for life and experience that finds fulfillment primarily in the life of the mind rather than in the life of the senses (his concluding injunction is “To strive, to seek, to find,” not “to taste, to touch, to smell”).

  Geographical exploration in the poem symbolizes intellectual exploration. The key lines of this interpretation are lines 30-32: “And this gray spirit yearning in desire/To follow knowledge like a sinking star/Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.” But throughout the poem are words and phrases that reinforce this reading.

  In line 5 Ulysses characterizes Ithacans as a savage race that “hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me” (that is, a people who live a materialistic and physical life and know not the excitement of the intellectual life). In line 13 he says, “Much have I seen and known.”

  In line 46 he addresses his mariners as souls that “have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me.”

  The westward journey has a double symbolism that is also congruent with the interpretation presented for the fifth question. In sailing westward (moving toward the setting sun), Ulysses is sailing toward death (going west is a traditional symbol for death); he is also sailing from what, for the Greeks, was the known world (the Mediterranean world) into what was of them the unknown world (the world of the Atlantic, beyond the Strait of Gibraltar). The meaning is that Ulysses will continue to seek new knowledge, new discovery, until his death. The continuing nature of this search is also indicated in the images of following knowledge, new discovery, until his death.

  The continuing nature of this search is also indicated in the images of following knowledge (“like a sinking star” (31) and of sailing “beyond the sunset and the baths/Of all the western stars” (60 - 61). One cannot, of course, ever catch up with a sinking star or with the setting sun; no mater how far west one sails, they still set beyond a horizon still farther west. Likewise, no matter how much quest is truly one of continuing aspiration: his thirst for new knowledge will never be satisfied; he will continue to seek new knowledge until he dies. What will become of him after death, he does not know (62 - 44), but his program of life before death is clearly mapped out.

  “Thunder” and “sunshine” (48) are symbols for adversity and good fortune.