Ode+to+the+West+Wind

=//__Ode to the West Wind - Percy Bysshe Shelley__//= By: Katarina Hedler

__Genre__: Ode, Terza Rima rhyme scheme (ABA BCB CDC DED EF), split into Canto's __Influence__: The Romantics

__Distinguishable poetic devices/style:__ -Alliteration ("wild West Wind") -Personification ("Autumn's being", "West Wind", "the blue Mediterranean") -Metaphor ("thou breath of Autumn's being") -Simile ("the leaves dead/ Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing") ("Each like a corpse within its grave") (Driving sweet buds like flowers to feed in the air) ("Drive my dead thoughts over the universe/Like withered leaves") ("Scatter, as from an unextinguishable hearth/Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!") -Repetition ("hear, oh, hear!" -> repeated as well at the end of three cantos) -Allusion ("Like the bright hair uplifted from the head/Of some fierce Maenad" -> reference to Greek mythology; Maenads were the followers of Dionysus and their name translates to "the raving ones") -Paradox ("Destroyer and preserver" -> the wind destroys nature because it rips the leaves off the trees, but it preserves it because when the leaves fall on the ground they decompose and the seeds are safe to hibernate through the winter, so that come spring, they will be ready to grow.) -Hyperbole ("I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!")

__Historical Period/Influence:__ -written in 1819 -the Peterloo Masacre of August 1819 -the industrial revolution caused many poets to realize the beauty and importance of nature -pantheism; nature has taken place of God

__Characters/Relationships:__ -the Wind -the persona -the audience -In the first three cantos the persona is praising the wind, and trying to convince the audience to see it the way that he does -the last two cantos are a change of tone where the persona is suddenly speaking only to the wind, revealing why he wants to be just like it

__Setting/Plot:__ -the persona is praising the wind and referencing it in situations with nature, the ocean, the sky, and himself

__Thematic Observations:__ -images of death are repeated when describing the wind, but it isn't meant ominously, becuase the wind doesn't induce permanent death, only a stage in life. (ex. "dead, ghosts, fleeing, pestilence-stricken multitudes...") -the power of the wind is explicitly described; even the ocean is afraid of it (ex. "...cleave themselves into chasms", "grow gray with fear, tremble and despoil themselves") -the strong solitary character of the wind is depicted with "tameless, swift, proud, O uncontrollable"

__Quotable Quotes:__ "If even/I were as in my boyhood, and could be/The comerade of thy wanderings" -> This is the main message of the poem. The persona wishes that he could recapture his childhood; to reconnect with appreciation and wonder "Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;/Destroyer and preserver" -> The wind has no bounds, no chains; is perfectly free, but gives the world a future through its actions "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" -> No matter how dismal things may get, there is always a sense of hope.

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Ode to the West Wind Text - Brooklyn Tracey

Commentary: Expresses the wind as a force that is destructive and creative Stanza 1: autumn leave Stanza 2: Clouds Stanza 3: Waves Stanza 4: Crisis between Shelley failing to recover the imaginative confidence of boyhood which inks him to the wind himself. - "Ode" itself is the relationship between imagination and the power of nature Shelley longs for

The stanza of this ode is comiplicated fusion of the sonnet and of terza rima. (each stanza is 14 lines, shifts into argument in the middle, and ends in a couplet.) RHYME SCHEME: aba bcb cdc ded ee - Tumbling effect of rhyme scheme creates a sense of the turbulent, swilring activity of the wind as it drives and tosses the leaves, clouds and waves.

1.) a: What are the three dominant images in the first three parts of the poem? - Dead leaves, cold and deep and dark colors. b: How does the effect of the wind on each of these elements in nature bear out Shelley's characterization of the wind as "destroyer and preserver"? - Explains how the wind tumbles and swirls and is very turbulent. Quick activity of the wind as it drives and tosses the leaves clouds and wind suggest that the wind is very powerful.

2.) a: What is the speakers attitude towards himself as the end of stanza 4? - He is feeling sad and lonely. He lost his wide " A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed. one too like thee: tamles, and swift, and proud" > Time has made him less powerful

b: How does his attitude change in stanza 5? - He seems to be happier and is "asking the wind to take him" Instead of being the winds passive object of the winds power, he will be its active instrument -> be its "lyre" receiving its "mighty harmonies" like a wind harp