Ode to a Nightingale By John Keats - Essay Example

“Ode to a Nightingale” By John Keats In this poem, the speaker/narrator utilizes a heightened expertise in relaying both pain and varied life’s challenges that have twisted his fate. Life’s challenges highlighted in this poem comprise poet’s products of imagination thoughts, which he exhibits by assuming the state of true self both from the beginning and towards the end of the entire poem. Hence, manage to bring out clearly his message concerning life’s mystery, which has twisted his fate through hardships to the extent of wishing for an early exile from this existence.

Thesis: This essay seeks to relay how Keats in his poem has managed to utilize diction, tone and imagery to relay his message explicitly. In his quest to show wish of fading away from numerous challenges that have altered what he thought to attain in this world, Keats skillfully utilizes the imagery of intoxication. This prompts readers to think the speaker is experiencing utter intoxication because of Nightingale’s music, which is similar to a wine such that will make him to vanish off to the realm of blissful nothingness (19).

This is evident as he tries to expound how images of wine zooms in the glass, which he intends to drink by stating, “With beaded bubbles winking at the brim” (17), “That I might drink, and leave the world unseen” (18) and “And with thee fade away into the forest dim” (19). In addition, the narrator in this poem utilizes imagery, which is in form of a dream to feature three main alterations that comprise the entire poem’s structural response. This is evident especially in the initial and final stanzas, which are completely different from others due to their aspect of representing narrator’s true self when he is out of this world (79).

For Instance, initially the narrator confesses of severe heartache (1), which is contrary to the singing Nightingale though he ends up dismissing the bird citing he concurs with what it was doing. Towards the end of the final stanza, the narrator exclaims whether he is awake or asleep, which marks the end of long imagination journey (80). Keats also utilizes the aspect of diction to relay varied responses characterizing the entire poem as well as how different events relate with each other.

The theme of this work is about conflict existence characterizing human life, whereby the focus of diction encompasses creating relationship between varied aspects exhibited by narrator’s sentiments. For instance, the initial stanza comprises of a mixture of both joy and pain whereby the latter feeling expounds vivid narrator’s state where he confesses to be numb (1). To emphasize this feeling, the speaker uses words like “hemlock” (2), “lethe” (4) and “Dryad” (7). This is to show correlation between joy and pain which he is experiencing.

Hence, creating platform in relaying two responses of happiness and hurting whereby the latter characterizes human existence contrary to that of the singing bird. Dominating tone in this poem is that of both agony and regret but the narrator chooses to change towards the end to a joyful one. In his expression of hurt, the speaker likens it with “Hemlock”, which is a bitter poison mostly used by Greeks to terminate lives of lawbreakers (2). Speaker proceeds with the expounding of his pain even to Nightingale by claiming he is not jealousy of the bird’s joy but hurts inside (5) & (6).

Expression of regret is evident when it dawns unto him that he is unable to change his dream word into a reality. In his exclamation the narrator says, “Do I wake or sleep?”(80). This is because he was unable to comprehend what his imagination thoughts were holding in the mind. Feeling of joy is evident at the end of the poem where the speaker expresses the joy of exposure he enjoyed while in the dreamland. Work Cited Keats, John. “Ode to a Nightingale”. Poetry Foundation. n.d. Web. 3rd September 2013.