Analysis of “The World Is Too Much with Us” by William Wordsworth
The sonnet “The World Is Too Much with Us” presents criticism and frustration of people’s unappreciation with nature’s beauty and separation from it. In the sonnet the speaker claims that mankind has lost its connection with nature and now prefers the materialistic world.
In the first quatrain of the Petrarchan sonnet, the speaker presents the issue in which people exchanged nature for the materialistic world. In the first and second lines “The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and Spending.” The speaker criticizes people’s infatuation with materialism; their pursuit after earning and spending as much as possible. While most of the sonnet is written in iambic pentameter, there is a slight change in the meter in the second line. The first word “[g]etting” is a trochee. This change emphasizes the speaker’s need to assert his point and say that all that is important to mankind is gaining and spending.
In the third line “Little we see in Nature that is ours” the speaker adds that there is little connection between nature and people by saying that few of the things that nature offers are seen by mankind. People are blinded by materialistic pleasures to the extent that they do not see what is free and in front of them.
In the fourth line, the speaker emphasizes his frustration even more by using the words “given our hearts away” as a metaphor to people’s estrangement from nature. This metaphor suggests that once people disconnected from nature and spirituality, and turned to pursue only the material they lost their souls. To emphasize his point even more, In the end of the fourth line the speaker uses an oxymoron in the phrase “sordid boon”. Boon means ...
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...m. The topos of Paganism in the poem may be the speaker’s way to say that mankind changed his pagan gods of nature to the gods of materialism. People now devote all their time to “[g]etting and spending” while before they devoted their time to admire nature.
In the ninth line, the speaker continues his previous thoughts by stating that nature does not move mankind as it did before. Right afterwards he uses an invocation to the monotheistic god and says his next thought that he’d rather be a Pagan if it will allow him to see the beauty and importance of nature. The enjambment in lines nine and ten “I’d rather be – A Pagan” emphasizes the speaker’s disgust with the current situation. He tells his god that he would prefer to become a Pagan, which is considered barbaric and unintelligent, rather than be part of the intelligent and civilized society that ignores nature.
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