Analysis Of 'Expostulation And Reply'

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Books provide material and information that contribute to man’s intellectual development. But what is it that books provide that exercise our brains? Books provide ideas, skills, facts and different ways of interpreting things, as well, they expand our vocabulary. Books help humanity to expand their knowledge. At the same time, nature is a factor that can also contribute in providing knowledge to humanity. The poem “Expostulation and Reply” expresses how nature can be a better factor in providing wisdom than the wisdom obtained from books.
The poem begins with Mathew, William’s friend, inquiring him why is he wasting his time away sitting outside daydreaming. Mathew views education as a necessity for the human mind to grow in reason and knowledge. Without books, humans become “forlorn and blind” from all the reason and knowledge of the world. Therefore, Matthew feels that books are necessary to “drink the spirit breathed/ From dead men to their kind”, meaning, the knowledge obtained from books comes from the experiences …show more content…

We become double when reading a book since at that moment we focus our attention to learn from the material we are reading, we are no longer focusing on our own self. As a result, we stop experiencing our own experience. For that reason, William does not want to be reading books, and rather wants to focus on enjoying his experience out in nature to avoid from becoming double. However, he himself becomes doubled in the poems. In the beginning of “Expostulation and Reply” Matthew says to William “Up! Up” and in “The Tables Turned” William repeats or “doubles” Matthew’s language by telling Mathew as well “Up! Up! ” A few lines later William suggests to Mathew, “quit your books, / Or surely you’ll grow double” when paradoxically, William is “double” by quoting a phrase from a book. This then demonstrates that it is impossible to experience the pure essence of

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