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Critical analysis of ode to the west wind
Critical analysis of ode to the west wind
Academic essays about percy shelley
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" Ode to the West Wind" was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley shortly before his death in 1822. Shelley spent the majority of his life in England where he was born to an upper class family. He attended Eton for his primary education and Oxford University until he was expelled for the publication of The Necessity of Atheism. Shortly after being expelled, Shelley married a commoner named Harriet Westbrook , which upset his family because of his wife’s low social standing. The marriage was short lived and Shelley quickly fell in love with Mary Godwin. Shelley continued writing throughout his life and his most notable works include "Ozamandias", "Laon and Cythna", and "Rosalind and Helen". Mary Shelley, Shelley’s wife who was also involved in literature, wrote Frankenstein. In 1822 Shelley drowned in a boating accident in the Gulf of Spieza. Shelly is mainly noted as the most passionate of the Romantic writers and for his usage of experimental styles in poetry.
"Ode to the West Wind" was written by Shelley on a day when the weather was unpredictable and windy, the poem reflects the mood of the weather and expresses Shelley’s desire for creativeness and intellect. The first section of the poem focuses on the description of the colorful autumn leaves being stirred by the wind. The line " Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver.." shows the relationship between Shelley’s desire to create and nature’s force. The second section of the poem tells about the clouds in the sky that are forewarning " the locks of the approaching storm". The fierce storm clouds represent Shelley’s frustration in his lack of original ideas. The third section relates the winds effect on the waves in the sea, which Shelley describes as ".. Grey with fear and tremble and despoil themselves…".
In the fourth section of the poem Shelley shows his desire to be the autumn leaves, tempest clouds, and turbulent waves so that he to can be effected by the wind and nature the way the objects are.
Shelley uses symbolic meaning to depict the destruction of a statue and the “sands that stretch far away” in relation to the effects of pride, a direct contrast from the words on the pedestal. The images of the deteriorating items gives the readers an understanding of time’s ultimate power beyond both life and pride. However, the cliché use of sands as a means of representing time still explains to readers that the passing of time is prevalent in the poem and related to the destroyed items presents the concept of a useless
Edna St. Vincent Millay says that “the summer sang in me” meaning that she was once as bright and lively as the warm summer months. In the winter everyone wants to bundle up and be lazy, but when summer comes along the sunshine tends to take away the limits that the cold once had on us. She uses the metaphor of summer to express the freedom she once felt in her youth, and the winter in contrast to the dull meaningless life she has now. There are many poets that feel a connection with the changing seasons. In “Odes to the West Wind” Percy Bysshe Shelley describes his hopes and expectations for the seasons to inspire the world.
In this poem, Frost includes his fear of the ocean and exaggerates its destructive power. As Judith Saunders stated that “The first thirteen lines have depicted an ocean storm of unusual force, and through personification the poet attributes to this storm a malign purposefulness” (1). Frost provided human characteristics on the storm to help prove his point that the ocean has bad intentions and its only purpose is to hurt him. Frost does not describe the waves as a result of unfavorable weather; he explains them as having a malignant intention to destroy the world. This poem revolves around the forces of nature and could be included in the long list of nature themed poems by Robert Frost.
Mary Shelley wrote ‘Frankenstein’ also known as ‘The Modern Prometheus’ in 1818, when she was seventeen. Shelley was born in 1797 and married Percy Bysshe in 1816. Shelley’s husband died in 1822 aged twenty-nine, Shelley died in 1851 aged fifty-four. Shelly was raised by her father, her mother died when she was just ten days old. Her mother was a famous feminist writer and philosopher, her father was an anarchist philosopher, atheist and journalist. Shelley had an excellent education when she was eleven.
Mary Shelley had a completely heartbreaking life. She was born in London, England on August 30,1797. Her full name is Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley. Her father was the politician William Godwin and her mother was the author of The vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft. Mother Mary Wollstonecraft died shortly after childbirth. Shelley says this about her childhood, “As a child, I scribbled; and my favorite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to ‘write stories.’” (Shelley.) As Mary grew older, her
Fire, ash, and the “red branch of the slow autumn” are all mentioned in his first thought about how their relationship currently is as if to describe it as dangerous, and out of control. However, it’s contrasted to water at the end of the second stanza through words like “boats,” “sail” and “isles.” Even though there is a wind flame-like element, there is still a water-like calmness because everything reminds him of her. The third symbol of wind is mentioned in the fifth stanza. Wind blows freely and provides descriptive imagery as he explains what would happen if she left the place where roots are. This leads to the fourth symbol of Earth which is depicted through roots and, oater, flowers. Plants contrast with wind because they can’t leave like the wind does. They also symbolize how their love would grow if she stayed and loved him as described in the last
During this time in the poem, he gives beautiful metaphorical imagery, comparing the grass to other things and illustrating a better idea of what the grass is. Also during this speculation period, the wording becomes denser, as the ideas become complex. Whitman moves from the single-lined "childish" voice, into the adult stage of the poem. Here, he becomes surer of what the grass is and does less guessing. Around line 101, Whitman starts toward the turning point in the essay, describing the death aspect of the grass. Words like "dark" change the mood of the poem to a slower, sadder state. At line 110, the poem takes a sudden change and reads much quicker. It changes into a kind of argument and Whitman speaks more affirmatively. Now it seems as if he has been enlightened and understands what the grass is. The feeling of death changes to life and darkness changes to light.
The first three stanzas invoke the West Wind as a driving force over the land, the sky, and the ocean and implore it to “hear” the poets call for it to perform its duty. (14, 28, 42) In the first stanza the wind is characterized as a “Destroyer and preserver” (14) which drive dead leaves and the “wingèd seeds” (7) to the closing season’s burial and the coming spring’s rebirth. Within the recurring second and third stanzas Shelley extends the leaf image to additional earthen objects thus creating an epic metaphor throughout the poem.
Mary Shelley’s professional life as her husband’s editor, a novelist, and a poet began in 1816, in Scotland when she began her first novel. First of all, while Mary Shelley visited her family in England, Shelley became an acquaintance to the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and later became his wife (Walling 9) and full time editor. As Percy Shelley’s reviser, she promoted the understanding of his works, which led to the history of biographical-literary criticism (Spark ix). Shelley traveled frequently, once to Italy in 1818, where she composed Italian Lives, which appeared in Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopedia (Walling 10). Shelley’s marriage persisted for eight years (Spark ix), which ended on July 8, 1822 when Percy Shelley drown (Walling 10), and left her a single mother of a child, and a son on the way (Spark ix). Second, Mary Shelley achieved her highest acknowledgments for her writings and gothic novels. Shelley began her first novel Frankenstein (Thompson 2), at nineteen years of age in the summer of 1816 and publicized it on March 11, 1818 (Walling 9). The horror novel received numerous reviews and became one of the literary events of 1818 (Walling 34). Shelley wrote five other novels in her lifetime including The Last Man (Walling 72) and Valpera. The Last Man, published in 1826 (Walling 10), and Frankenstein are Shelley’s two most sought novels, and William Walling observes that they are "two novels whose loneliness is final
Mary Shelley was born in 1797 to Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, two of the greatest liberal thinkers of the time. Her mother died after two weeks of giving birth to her, leaving Shelley feeling both abandoned by and guilty of her mother’s death. Her father was left with the responsibility of raising her; however, he did not fulfill his duties to her as a father. He gave her only a haphazard education, and largely ignored her emotional needs. She met Percy Shelley when she was only fifteen, and when they ran away together two years later, her father disowned her (Duncan, Greg. "Frankenstein: The Historical Context."). Percy was married at the time, but left his first wife when Shelley was pregnant with their first child. His first wife, Harriet, killed herself s...
As each work progresses, a personal change is expressed. The first section of “Ode to the West Wind” presents a speaker —who is also the author— who seems to be intently overserving the wind; however by the final section, he desires to be like the wind. When he writes that the Wind should “Be thou, Spirit fierce, / My spirit! Be thou me” (Lines 61-62), the author expresses a deep desire to be one with powerful force. A few lines later, he asks the wind to “Drive my dead thoughts over the universe / …to quicken a new birth!” (Lines 63-64) “Scatter, as …/ Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind” (Lines 66-67). In this instance, the “dead thoughts” are Shelley’s previous works. By making a comparison between his words and “ashes and sparks” (Line 67), Shelley expresses the idea that even though his previous works are dead and separated from him, he hopes his words will be able to inspire or ignite new thoughts and artistry in others. At the same time, Byron presents a different sort of personal experience. In the first stanza, Byron writes that “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, /…rapture on the lonely shore” (Lines 1-2). He later writes that when he is in solitude, and surrounded by nature, he feels “What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal” (Line 9). By using these descriptions, Byron shows that there is a type of restoring quality that the natural world can have on a person, an
In the first stanza of the poem, Whitman explains what he is doing in that, “I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass” (5). Although one might just think that grass is only grass and there is nothing more, Whitman feels as if there is so much more beneath the surface of this simple object. Whitman also really emphasizes the idea of eternity and that the grass represents something more than life.
Even though both John Keats’s “To Autumn” and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” are about the same season, they are very dissimilar. Keats’s poem concentrates on the creating power of autumn, and makes it seem a gentle season, while in Shelley’s poem death is a repeating image, and shows autumn’s destroying power.
Both Shelley, in "Ode to the West Wind," and Wordsworth, in "Intimations of Immortality," are very similar in their use of nature to describe the life and death of the human spirit. As they both describe nature these two poets use the comparison of how the Earth and all its life is the same as our own human life. I feel that Shelley uses the seasons as a way of portraying the human life during reincarnation. Wordsworth seems to concentrate more on the stages that a person goes through during life. Shelley compares himself to such things as clouds, leaves, and waves. He is writing the poem as if he were an object of the earth, and what it is like to once live and then die only to be reborn. On the other hand, Wordsworth takes images like meadows, fields, and birds and uses them to show what gives him life. Life being what ever a person needs to move on, and with out those objects can't have life. Wordsworth does not compare himself to these things like Shelley, but instead uses them as an example of how he feels about the stages of living. Starting from an infant to a young boy into a man, a man who knows death is coming and can do nothing about it because it's part of life.
In the first part of the poem, the Mariner starts his journey on the ship and perceives nature just with his senses. He sees it solely as a force, that will help him get to his desired destination.