Lesson Plans

Assignment to have been completed: Students should have Read “Figurative Language 2 – Symbol, Allegory,” pp. 725-736, in Perrine’s Literature. They should also have written responses to Exercise 1 on 736.

Objectives:

1. To recognize symbols
2. To develop controlled and justifiable interpretations of symbolism

Activities:

• A. Collect homework.

• B. Go over the exercises on p. 745 (Exercise 1 only).

  • 1. symbol
  • 2. literal
  • 3. metaphor
  • 4. symbol
  • 5. metaphor

• C. Review the concept of symbolism.

  • 1. Image, metaphor, and symbol shade into each other and are sometimes difficult to distinguish.
    • a. An image means only what it is.
    • b. The figurative term in a metaphor means something other than what it is.
    • c. A symbol means what it is and something more, too.
  • 2. A symbol functions literally and figuratively at the same time.
  • 3. A symbol defines an area of meaning, and any interpretation that falls within that area is legitimate. Whenever the meaning is open, the reader is justified in bringing personal experience to its interpretation.
  • 4. Because a symbol may be rich in meanings, we must use the greatest tact in interpreting it.
  • 5. Just because the meaning of a symbol is more or less open, we may not assume to make it mean anything we choose. Whatever our interpretation of a symbolic poem, it must be tied firmly to the facts of the poem.

• D. Review the concept of allegory.

  • 1. Allegory is a narrative or description that has a second meaning beneath the surface.
  • 2. Allegory involves a system of related comparison rather than one comparison drawn out.
  • 3. Allegory puts less emphasis on the images for their own sake and more on their ulterior meanings, meanings that are - in fact - more fixed.
  • 4. Allegory is an effective way of making the abstract concrete.

• E. Have one of the students read “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost p. 818 aloud. Ask the students the following questions about the poem. You may use the responses in bold italics to help you gauge their answers.

  • 1. Scientists have made various predictions about how the world will end, most of them involving either a fiery or an icy terminus. At the time that Frost published this poem (December 1920), probably the two leading theories were (a) that, as the earth gradually loses momentum in its orbit, it will be drawn by gravity closer and closer to the sun, until finally it plunges into the sun and (b) that, as the sun gradually cools, or as the interior of the earth itself cools, the earth will get colder and colder, until finally all life is extinguished in a new ice age. (Both theories still have many supporters.)

  • 2. What do “fire” and “ice” respectively symbolize? What two meanings has “the world”?

    Fire becomes a symbol for desire or passion, ice a symbol for hate, the world a symbol for human or civilized life (“world” means both physical and social world).

    The poet has experienced enough of desire and hate within himself to recognize that both passion (e.g., desire for sensual gratifications, possessions, or power) and hate (e.g., between nations, classes, or races) are forces strong enough to bring an end to mankind.

  • 3. The poem ends with an understatement. How does it affect the tone of the poem?

    Instead of saying that desire or hate could ruin, wipe out, or annihilate mankind, Frost says only that either would “suffice.” That understatement takes a tone that begins on a scholarly note and progresses into a reflective one and abruptly shifts it to a diminishing dismissal.

• F. Have one of the students read “Ulysses,” pp. 818-820 aloud. After giving the students definitions provided in item 1, ask them the following questions about the poem. You may use the responses in bold italics to help you gauge their answers.

  • 1. Vocabulary:

    • lees (7): sediment settling during fermentation, especially in wine; dregs
    • Hyades (10): a cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus, the five brightest of which form a V, supposed by ancient astronomers to indicate rain when they rose with the sun
    • meet (42): fitting; proper

  • 2. Where exactly, in geographical terms, does Ulysses intend to sail (59-64)?

    Ulysses intends to sail “beyond the sunset, and the baths/Of all the western stars.” In geographical terms, he intends to sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the westernmost point of the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic Ocean.

  • 3. Ulysses’ speech is divided into three sections, beginning at lines 1, 33, and 44. What is the topic or purpose of each section? To whom, specifically, is the third section addressed? To whom, would you infer, are sections 1 and 2 addressed? Where do you visualize Ulysses as standing during his speech?

    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.” Perhaps, Ulysses addresses the council of elders, though his honesty about the Ithacans may make that supposition unlikely. Perhaps he 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.

    Section 3 the speaker specifically addresses to “My mariners,” those who would venture forth on the kind of quest Ulysses seeks. This section serves as a rallying speech during which he works to build interest in his final quest.

    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.

  • 4. Characterize Ulysses. What kind of person is he as Tennyson represents him?

    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.

  • 5. What way of life is symbolized by Ulysses? Find as many evidences as you can that Ulysses’ desire for travel represents something more than mere wanderlust and wish for adventure.

    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.”

  • 6. Give two symbolic implications of the westward directions of Ulysses’ journey.

    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.

    What will become of him after death, he does not know (62 - 44), but his program of life before death is clearly mapped out.

  • 7. Interpret lines 18-21 and 26-29. What metaphor is implied in line 23? What is symbolized by “the thunder and the sunshine” (48)? What do the two metonymies in line 49 stand for?

    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.

    Lines 26 - 29 tell us that every hour of life brings new experience, new knowledge. (Grammatically, the subject 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.)

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

    “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”).

Assignment for next class meeting: Read “Chapter Seven – Figurative Language 3,” pp. 749-758, in Perrine’s Literature. Write out full responses to all nine Exercises starting at the bottom of p. 758.