Throughout “Tithonus” Free Essay Example

Ever wonder what it would be like to have three wishes? I remember being a little girl and always believing in fairy tales and all of the magic that the stories illustrate. One wish that I would always dream to wish for was immortal life, as I’m sure most people off hand would. However, sometimes not all wishes are built up to be all that they seem. In Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Tithonus”, the Ancient Greek, lover of Eos was given the so-called “gift” of eternal life.

As most people would see it as a gift, he reveals his most inner thoughts and feelings on his now eternal life.

As Natalie Babbitt one wrote, “For some, time passes slowly. An hour can seem like an eternity. For others, there was enough” (Good Reads). Granted the power of immortality by his lover, Aurora, he was given the opportunity to live forever. What could possible be so terrible with eternal life? Most individuals would say that they could only dream of immortality, and to beat death in its race for life.

However, Tennyson goes into great description of the suffering that Tithonus experiences. The poem, “Tithonus” is encompassed around depression, sorrow and misery. Negative images and metaphors are outlined through the gravest details.

This is depicted to us straight from the first line of the poem, “The woods decay, the woods decay and fall” (Norton,1964). As followed in agony with “Me only cruel immortality consumes; I wither slowly in thine arms” (Norton, 1964).

These lines exemplify the pain and suffering that Tithonus experiences as he comes to face his cruel new reality. To his dismay, he never thought to include the gift of physical youth as part of his wish. With that being said, poor Tithonus suffers with his image and becomes depressed knowing that his physically being will eventually decay with all of the other physical matter in this world.

Throughout “Tithonus”, a message of a disturbed past taunts Tithonus with the comparison of his old life to his current. He demonstrates feelings of nostalgia and longing for his past life. It appears that it’s a daunting feeling to look back on his past life and see almost a future resembling a black hole, falling and flying through the loopholes of time. Tithonus begins to refer to himself as “Once a man” in the third person, using his past self as an obstacle between himself and the actual acuity of himself. With doing so Tennyson provides a sense of immobility, stuck in a time warp.

It’s a deadly trap that he can’t escape from, and unfortunately one that he never will. Alfred, Lord Tennyson also wrote a blank verse poem titled “Ulysses”, similar in some ways to “Tithonus. ” Ulysses is the Latin form of the name Odysseus and is also the hero of the Odyssey. “Ulysses” is a piece, which involves discontent and depression comparable to Tithonus. In his extreme depression and isolation on Ithaca during “Ulysses”, he stresses over his boredom and the fact that his people are acting like animals. His undying dream is to travel the world and explore until the ends of the earth.

He believes that his life means to explore life is his duty bound. Unfortunately for him, the closer he gets to fulfilling his dream of traveling the world, the farther things move from him and escape what appears to be his reality. Tennyson wrote about this because he deeply believed in placement on different orders in society and to display different viewpoints to his followers and society. All of this appears to be a parallel to “Tithonus”. Tennyson wrote “Tithonus” and conceived his character as a counterpart to Ulysses.

Tennyson suggests trouble with Ulysses by addressing danger in his piece. He does so by suggesting in “Ulysses” that an execution may bring a horrible downfall stating ‘it may be that the gulfs will wash us down” (Norton, 1964). Tithonus’ represents the consciousness of this likelihood and successfully achieves that which Ulysses desires, yet unfortunately he realizes that he is disappointed. Tennyson illustrates the idea of the world as wheel. In the poem, Aurora describes her world to revolve around new beginnings that she experiences on a daily basis.

Her world is a parallel to the breaking dawn symbolizing a cycle of life. Tithonus’ world on the other hand circles around perpetual aging versus perpetual life as Aurora’s does. Tithonus explains this by proclaiming “The lucid outline forming around thee; saw the dim curls kindle into sunny rings” (Norton, 1965). This line really made me stop to really think about the imagery Tennyson uses through nature to illustrate the gap between the two and their relationship with one another in their own worlds. Later on, Tennyson ends by wrapping up with an visual of a heart’s eath and bereavement through words of depression by mourning, “I earth in earth forget these empty courts, and the returning on thy silver wheels” (Norton 1965).

I was able to reflect on these lines and compare them to another quote by Natalie Babbitt which reads, “Everything’s a wheel, turning, and turning, never stopping. The frogs in part of it, the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That’s the way its supposed to be. That’s the way it is. (Good Reads)

Babbitt pinpoints the same issues and concerns that Tithonus also addresses. The relationship between his wheel and the motions of the one Babbitt focuses on, stresses the same values and interpretations behind them. Tennyson’s poem usually leaves readers reflecting on life and the true beauty behind it. As humans, I believe that we tend to take a lot of life’s moments for granted and see past them too busy with all of chaos in our day-to-day lives. It teaches us a lesson of satisfaction, in an effort to be happy for what you have.

This goes for all situations, even if it isn’t the best of situations. You should always remember, as good or as bad as you may have it, someone out there has it a lot worse than you think you do. And this is exactly what Tennyson does through Tithonus’ character. This goes along with the moral of the story, to be careful what you wish for. Overall, I really enjoyed the poem as a whole. My favorite part dealt with the imagery and illustrations that Alfred, Lord Tennyson used to depict certain feelings or expressions.

I, myself, being a student of fine arts found this to be very appealing in a sense that the arts in literature can work with forming images in a sense of physical art. The idea of nature that ever so naturally flows through Tennyson’s work is also very attractive to me. I love how he really had me thinking about the beauty of life and how precious it really can be. I believe that Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote “Tithonus” to create a moral of the story. He wanted others to study Tithonus’ character and learn from his mistakes.

I know that life may seem short, but it is sweet for certain and that’s what matters the most. It’s not about the amount or length of time that you spend on Earth, but the way you go about the time that you have left. Tithonus could not enjoy his life because what he thought was a great wish really turned into a curse for him. You should never want to end your life or fear death, however you should fear the life you have not lived. Every second counts. For just as Natalie Babbitt once wrote, “Don’t be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live” (Good Reads).