Compare and Contrast Tithonus and Ulysses Alex Williamson 14 th February 2001
Tithonus and Ulysses were written by Alfred Lord Tennyson; a poet
famous for his representation of Victorianism in his poetry, recognised by
the fact that Queen Victoria appointed him as the poet laureate. He wrote
Tithonus in 1860 and Ulysses in 1842. Both poems display similar
grammatical structure; both are dramatic monologues, that is to say that
both are written in the first person with the subject of the poems
narrating, a style popular in Victorian poetry as it is a form of the
Victorian’s favourite genre of writing; the novel; both concern GrecoRoman mythology and the extensions thereof produced in the Middle
Ages: there is no record of Ulysses either continuing or wishing to continue
his travels after his arrival from Troy, it is generally accepted that this
concept was later added to the myth by Dante.
Both poems begin in similar fashion; Tithonus begins with the
imagery of death and decay; ‘The woods decay, the woods decay and fall’
due mainly to the fact that he has seen almost everything die away apart
from himself, furthermore Ulysses soon depicts imagery of emptiness and
desolation; ‘among these barren crags, match’d with an aged wife’ he not
only graphically depicts his discontent but also suggests that he can not
engage in procreation as his wife is infertile.
However it soon becomes apparent that the narrators have entirely
different objectives; Tithonus is weary of the world, he has been
immortalised without eternal youth and as a direct result he must suffer
the pain of age without the reprieve of death; his wife, Dawn,
inadvertently neglected to request eternal youth for her lover from the
Gods and as such he as and old man prays for death: ‘the happier dead…
Restore me to the ground’. This cannot possibly happen, as the Gods
simply cannot retract their actions; ‘The Gods themselves cannot recall
their gifts’. Despite his love and admiration of his lover, Tithonus is bitter at
the Dawn for her inability to reflect on the consequences of her actions:
‘like wealthy men who care not how they give’; it is his detestation of his
own age and his willingness to die that encapsulates Tithonus: ‘Man… lies
beneath’, his age is demonstrated by both his alarming lack of feeling (it is
as if he has to remember feelings as opposed to experiencing them): ‘I
used to watch’ and his physical decrepitude: ‘cold my wrinkled feet’.
Ulysses is entirely different; far from being tired of life, he laments
his lack of freedom and excitement: ‘I mete and dole’ and ‘an idle king’ he
makes it abundantly clear that he seeks fame: ‘honour’d of all of them’,
which simply does not receive in Ithaca: ‘ a savage race… know not me’ and
‘I am become a name’. Ulysses is in fact so egocentric that he cannot exist
without adulation and action: ‘I cannot rest from travel’ and ‘for always
roaming with a hungry heart’. Ulysses’ boredom is the greatest factor in
his desire to travel. He desperately wants to free himself from the shackles
of responsibility: ‘to whom I leave this sceptre’ and ‘tis not to late to seek a
newer
world’, the ironic fact of his childish dereliction of his
responsibilities is the fact that he places his own child, Telemachus, in
charge of what he sees as mundane, monotonous tasks: ‘of common
duties’ and ‘by slow prudence to make mild’. He continues his irony by
stating ‘well-loved of me’ before announcing that he is to administer a task
that Ulysses sees as to dreary for himself. He sees responsibility as a fetter,
restraining his ability to continue his extravagancies and his urge to travel:
‘I will drink life to the lees’, this statement directly contrasts with Tithonus’
wish to die, whereas Ulysses wants to continue in his impossible journey to
find happiness as a nomad, shown by Tennyson to be unobtainable: ‘to
follow knowledge like a sinking star’ and ‘beyond the utmost bound of
human thought’.
Compare and Contrast Tithonus and Ulysses Page2 Alex Williamson 14 th February 2001
It is ironic that the majority of the sensuality in the two poems lies
in Tithonus, for he and Dawn still share a relationship that can only be
based on touch and feeling due to her inability to speak: ‘In silence, then
before thine answer given’ and ‘whispering I knew not what of’. However
she seems to be the only thing that can restore his vitality, despite the
fact that it was her blunder, which caused Tithonus to lose his vivacity:
‘felt my blood glow’ and of course the phallic metaphor of the rise of
Troy to Apollo’s song: ‘While Ilion like a mist rose into towers’. However
his age is prohibitive to the couple’s physical love and soon the sexual
metamorphoses into
the maternal: ‘thy rosy shadows bathe me’,
continued by ‘I wither slowly in thine arms’. Ulysses, however has the
problem that he simply cannot access his sexuality while on Ithaca, as is
suggested by the implication that his wife is infertile; he years for the
days on his travels when procreation was virtually for him a recreational
activity, however his reference to this is laconic at best: ‘he works his
work, I work mine’.
Both poems are Rhetorical insofar as that they attempt to change
something; however despite the cause of both men’s troubles being the
same they desire contrary results; Tithonus desperately wants to be at
one with the common man and die, he is already on the verge of
nothingness: ‘A white haire’d shadow roaming like a dream’, indirect
contrast to the Dawn’s life and vitality, renewed every day: ‘Immortal age
beside immortal youth’, ‘thy cheeks begin to redden’, the contrast
between two extremes is marked as dawn pulses with vitality, life and
vigour whereas Tithonus simply wants to die and rest eternally. Ulysses
wants the reverse, he wishes to cast off mortality and death and to
continue to travel, he makes it clear he feels it is never too late to stop
broadening oneself: ‘the long day wanes’ (A metaphor for death based on
the ancient Greek riddle of man’s progress through life in a day). However
it becomes apparent he doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do: ‘to
strive, to seek, to find and not to yield’; he simply wants to abandon
responsibility and experience excitement and adventure before he
succumbs to death.
Both of these poems exhibit similar characteristics in terms of both
structure and narrative style; however the contrast between the two
narrators could not be more marked; one, Ulysses, exhibits the desire to
abandon all that makes him normal, he seeks fame, fortune, adulation and
an escape from mortality and responsibility.
Tithonus seeks the antithesis to Ulysses; he wants to abandon all that make him
unconventional; his lack of human contact and above all; his immortality.