Essays /
Comparing Wordsworth's Ode: Intimations of Immortal and Pastan's Ethics [5]
Thank you for the critique! I've finished writing it last night because I thought it was due soon, butI have a lot more time than I initially thought. To have someone critique the entire essay, should I post it here or on another thread?
William Wordsworth, an Englishman of the early nineteenth century, and Linda Pastan, a contemporary American, are poets from different centuries. Despite this, they both write effectively on the contrast between adulthood and childhood. Wordsworth writes
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, using imagery, rhyme and iambic line to show that children, because they are more closely connected to the eutopian state of being before birth, are wiser than adults are. Pastan, however, believes that wisdom and the maturity to make difficult decisions comes with age. In her poem Ethics, instead of using iambic lines, she utilizes free rhyme to reveal the theme of her poem. Wordsworth emphasizes the superiority of childhood innocence over adulthood, whereas Pastan stresses that adulthood wisdom is better than adolescent immaturity.
Wordsworth, to introduce the theme of remembering childhood and of a child's lost innocence, uses various literary devices. Wordsworth starts his poem with the words, "The Child is father of the Man." Influenced by Plato's theory of a soul's existence before birth, he clearly shows that in his poem, child begets the man, in that the innocent child comes first, and the grown man follows. He imagines a eutopia of nature, light, and beauty with descriptive language. To illustrate the transition from the eutopia to the realization of earthly life, he says, "while the young lambs bound/As to the tabor's° sound,/To me alone there came a thought of grief" (22-25). Wordsworth effectively introduces the contrast between the physical world and the world whence every soul came. He feels that something has left the earth. He continues his description of a beautiful, natural world, until he asks, "where is it now, the glory and the dream" (60). In the fifth stanza, he gives an important insight. He states, "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting" (61) and that "Heaven lies about us in our infancy!" (69). He says that one's life is a minor interruption in the life of her soul, which resided in heaven until birth into the physical world. He continues to say that as the soul stays in the physical world, "Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own" (81). The diversions of the tangible world entrap the soul, using pleasures only found on earth. In the next stanza, he describes a young boy who imitates adults, imitating their lives. He even speaks to the boy as if he were a higher being, whose "exterior semblance doth belie Thy Soul's immensity;/Thou best Philosopher" (110). He elevates the boy's status because according to the belief about preexistence, the child knows more about reality and truth than the speaker does. As he thinks of his childhood, rather than bitterly remembering innocence lost, he rejoices in his memories, saying, "The thought of our past years in me doth breed/Perpetual benediction" (135). As he continues in this vein, he repeats a phrase he spoke earlier: "And let the young lambs bound/As to the tabor's sound!/We in thought will join your throng" (168). In this, he is more energetic and joins in the rejoicing, unlike earlier, when he alone felt a tinge of grief and loss. He believes that children, still in tune with the spiritual world, have truth.
Pastan also uses a variety of literary strategies to argue a complicated point about the gaining of wisdom over a lifetime. She begins with time, describing a class "so many years ago" (1), in which a teacher asked a hypothetical question about ethics "every fall" (2), rather than every year. The fall is an important symbol in this poem, signifying time and change, when things start to die and days become shorter. The teacher asks whether the students would, in the midst of a fire, save a Rembrandt painting or an old woman "who hadn't many years left anyhow" (5). The poet confesses that, at the time, she did not care whether the old woman died or the Rembrandt painting burned. She emphasizes her juvenile indifference toward an ethical situation by using words like "restless" (6), and "half-heartedly" (8). She furthers this by adding another incident in her younger days, when she was young and self-assured. Faced with the question once again, she asked why she could not just let the old woman decide herself. The teacher tells Linda, using her name, that she "eschews the burdens of responsibility" (14), something that the youth often do. The young, believing that the situation does not apply to them, do not care. The poem fast-forwards to present day, where she goes to a museum as an old woman "this fall" (15). She continues in the seasonal symbolism, saying that the colors in the Rembrandt piece are "darker than autumn, darker even than winter" (18). She makes the Rembrandt as real as herself by describing the piece and giving life to it, connecting this to the question proposed every fall in her youth. Even more, she says the colors "burn", comparing this situation to the hypothetical one her teacher posed years earlier. In her maturity, she can see the question become reality, but not the same reality as the one she lives, because the elements are "almost one" (24). In the last line, she says that the elements of the question are "all beyond saving by children." By saying this, she means that some are too young to understand the profundity of ethics, and that one cannot depend on the youth to make decisions concerning certain subjects; they can only understand after maturity and wisdom has set in.
Wordsworth believes that children have truth, whereas Pastan believes truth comes with age. Wordsworth uses Plato's theory in his poem, where Pastan uses personal experience and free rhyme. Her use of free rhyme seems more modern than Wordsworth's poem of iambic fifths or thirds. Her viewpoint is a common thought: with age comes wisdom. Wordsworth's view is based on a Platonic theory that most people would not hold today. However, he writes the truth when he says, "Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own." This is also true for Pastan's poem. As a child spends more time in the physical realm, on earth, the more she will know of that world. Wordsworth's theme is based on the thought that children come to the earth as innocents, knowing the truths of the spiritual realm, but losing the knowledge of that realm as she gains knowledge of her new world. In Pastan's poem, at first, the speaker has little knowledge of the world or its ethics, but eventually grows in maturity over time. They both recognize a significant change between youth and later life.
Both poets effectively write poems about the change between childhood and adulthood. Wordsworth believes that although childhood was a better, purer stage of life, one can still fondly remember it. Pastan believes that people mature as they grow, learning how to work with the physical world. Even though Wordsworth concentrates on how the young forget their time before birth and Pastan focuses on maturity and age, they both realize that living in this world makes one accustomed to it.
I'll take it off if I should post it on the "Essay Writing Feedback" subforum.
>< I think I seriously veered off the topic at many points.
