John Keats — Ode to a Nightingale — An Analysis
PARA 1:
The Imagination has the ability connect an individual to natural worlds. In “Ode to a Nightingale,” the speaker John Keats longs to escape reality and to be in the world of the Nightingale. In stanza 3 he says, “Away! away! for I will fly to thee…on the viewless wings of Poesy”. Personification emphasises the route of Keats escape into the Nightingale’s world; he undergoes an imaginative journey through constructing poetry, and although his “dull brain perplexes and retards”, It is sufficient into transporting him into nature. He is able to imagine vividly his experiences of nature, “The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.” The rich and vivid olfactory, tactile and auditory imagery heightens the sublime elements of nature in the Nightingales world. A “rose” flowers in spring, but the flies murmur on summer eves. The juxtaposition of two seasons, spring and summer occuring at once highlights that the world is created by Keats’ imagination is illogical and not bound my reality.His imagination connects him to the world of the Nightingale, recreates the tranquility and restorative effects of nature and allows Keats to escape the human world of mortality. “Now more than ever it seems rich to die” Death consists of emptiness and desolation, but the use of oxymoron in “rich to die” associates death as abundant, fertile, and rich in positive experiences and further reinforces his feelings of fulfillment and tranquility as a result of entering the nightingales world.
PARA 2:
John Keats’ poem Ode to a Nightingale reveals the truth about the nature of the human condition and experiences. At the beginning of the poem, Keats hears the song of a nightingale, “My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.”Keats ambivalent tone at hearing the Nightingale’s song fills him with the melancholic desire to escape society and be in the Nightingale’s world. He becomes intoxicated and numbed by the conscious thought of his own mortality and human suffering. “The weariness the fever ad the fret where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”. The paranormal imagery emphasises the fragility of human mortality. Society causes individuals to grow old, weak and sick from stress and worry. It is a place where thoughts are “full of sorrow”, degrade the youth and the liveliness of human beings and causes them to become leaden-eyed” and fatigued from their own thoughts. Keats juxtaposes the vulnerability of human life with the idea that the Nightingale is eternal, “Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!” Oxymoron contrasts life and death and emphasises that the Nightingale exists in between the realm of dying and existing. The immortality of the Nightingale puts human life into perspective, it reveals the insignificance of human problems and the transience of mortality. It also connotes that because the Nightingale lives in nature, it is free from “fever”, and “fret”, and is not weakened and aged to death by society. Hearing the Nightingale’s song of immortal happiness allows Keats to reflect about the tragedy of human life and the misery of the human condition.
PARA 3:
Ode to a Nightingale explores the notion of tension through Keat’s yearning to escape mortality while paradoxically being inescapably confined to it. This is evident in the lines, “my sense as though as hemlock I had drunk… and lethe-wards had sunk” the heavy use of assonance and wilted lethargic sentence creates feelings of weariness and emphasises Keats’ melancholic desire and yearning to escape his mortality. This is further reinforced in the lines “fade far away dissolve and quite forget… the weariness the fever and the fret” the confluence of sibilance and assonance further unified by the rhyming phrases create a romanticized and tranquil image of leaving the human world. This illustrates Keats’ desperation an longing to escape death and a life where human life fades and “Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes”. He attempts to leave through his imagination “i cannot see what flowers are at my feet… but embalmed in darkness… the grass the thicket and the fruit tree wild” juxtaposition between darkness and vivid visual and olfactory imagery reinforce Keats’ connection to the Nightingale’s world through his imagination and the restorative effects it has in his psyche. Despite this, his escape is only temporary, “fancy cannot cheat so well she is famed to do deceiving elf” He personifies his imagination as a “deceiving elf” as it cannot “cheat” and permanently recreate worlds for him to experiences. Keats’ is inescapably rooted to reality thus to his mortality meaning he is irrevocably confined to his inevitable death.
