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Comparing Tennyson's Ulysses: Drinking Life To The Lees

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Drinking Life to the Lees
In Tennyson’s “Ulysses”, the title character tries to decide how he wants to live out the rest of his life. Ulysses spent twenty years trying to get back to Ithaca. In that time, he went on many adventures with his mariners. However, now that he is back, he is unhappy. He describes himself as an “Idle King (1) who “Metes and doles unequal laws” (3-4). Another thing he had looked forward to was getting home to his wife, Penelope. Now that he sees her he realizes he has changed a lot since he last saw her, twenty years ago. Now her youthful beauty has been replaced by aged ugliness. In the second stanza, Ulysses recounts his life of “… Drinking / Life to the lees…” (6-7). He recalls the sea and the battle of Troy. In …show more content…

Tennyson is trying to tell the reader to not waste away life like the Ithacans but to join Ulysses of living life to the fullest. Tennyson describes the Ithacans as “… a savage race” (4) and “… a rugged people” (37). Tennyson also describes the Ithacans as people who think living life is to inhale and exhale. By giving the Ithacans a negative connotation, Tennyson makes the way the live their lives unsatisfactory for the reader. Tennyson is trying to tell the reader that this isn’t the right way to live. Life isn’t just about going through the motions. Liafe is all about discovery. This is where Tennyson brings in Ulysses old life as a source for how to life is supposed to be lived. Tennyson describes life as adventures of the endless quest for knowledge: “To follow knowledge like a sinking star” (31). Finally, as the last line of the poem puts it, “Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” (69-70). These lines sum up the entirety of what Tennyson thinks the proper way to live life. In essence. Tennyson is telling the reader to stay strong in their adventures and to let your curiosity drive you all the way up until death, for life is too short to live it by merely waiting for it to

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