Poem Analysis: Where Are We Going?

Smith 6

Morgan Smith

Mr Huff

British Literature

11 February 2018

Where Are We Going?

Shelley, even though he gave up on religion in his earlier years, communicates his beliefs of immortality and afterlife in his poem ?Adonais?. Even though Shelley was an atheist, he still heavily believed in an afterlife and that people do not die when they go into the grave. He also uses the tone of the poem and a shift in stanza 39 to help show that Adonais is not dead. Many people believe that Shelley wrote this poem about John Keats. Shelley uses Greek mythology to help explain Adonais and how he needs to be mourned. In Shelley?s poem ?Adonais,? Shelley relays that he believes peoples bodies go somewhere after they die, but he did not believe in a central

He uses this personification to describe how he felt about the death of John Keats. He says that "Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down / Her kindling buds as if she Autumn were" (136). Grief captures Spring, the season that brings life to the world with extreme passion, that she no longer wants to give life. She wants to kill what is good in the world because Adonais has died. Urania wants to bring him back. She kisses his corpse but eventually says goodbye. The speaker also says that ?The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, / Even as a ghost abandoning a bier, / Had left the Earth a corpse.? (201-203). The golden Day, the speaker mentions, is the day before Adonais died. That day leaves the world behind because the Urania believes that the Earth does not deserve its warmth and happiness. Nature in the poem not only mourns Adonais but celebrates because he is not truly dead. The poem shifts in a significant way because of how natures react to Adonais's death. This shift occurs in Stanza

While at Oxford, Shelley gets kicked out because he wrote a pamphlet titled The Necessity of Atheism. After being kicked out of Oxford, Shelley?s reason for leaving religion behind was solidified (Matthews 1291). Since Shelley no longer identified with a religion, he felt as if he could say whatever he wanted and not offend anyone. Once he saw that was not the case, he tried to find friends that would submit to him and follow him. He did the same thing when he tried to find a spouse. He usually leaned towards the younger age group because they tended to admire him. Throughout Shelley's life, he looked for the world of sleep and dreams. He saw this as the afterlife. Donald Reiman says ?Shelley?s unwillingness to accept reality?? (Reiman xxiv). Shelley did not want to believe that what was happening in that day and age was reality. He wanted to believe that there was a dream world that was Utopia. Shelley also found out that good is going to beat evil and life will defeat death. The only problem was that Shelley did not believe in one central God because he had given up on religion. His belief in the afterlife but no central God influenced how he looked at death throughout his