The Prelude by William Wordsworth

Paragraph Synopsis

  • The poem centers on Wordsworth’s childhood memory in the Lake District, where he steals a boat and rows it to the middle of lake. A mountain by the lake grows far bigger than he thought it would, realizing the monumental nature of the mountain and changing his view of nature. This is shown by his scaredness of the event.

Context

  • Wordsworth had a difficult childhood due to a troubled relationship with his father and other relatives. After both his parents died, he lived with different relatives, being split up from his siblings. He spent time avoiding his mother’s family who treated him so badly that he considered suicide. During this, he developed a fondness for Lake District to escape his problems.

  • He is a romantic poet, in favor of resisting industrialization by remembering a simpler, natural past. This was the likely force that made him write “The Prelude”, coming with a warning of the dangers of transforming fields to factories.

  • He was an early supporter of the French revolution and made attempts to overthrow institutions. This movement however, lost support for the revolution after it turned violent. The poet’s aim was to write a 3-part autobiographical epic called “The Recluse” with The Prelude being the first volume of 400 pages but sadly died before its completion.

  • Romanticism stemmed from the enlightenment period, focusing on objective science, logic and rationality. Writers at the time rejected this and instead used a more emotional and subjective view of the world, looking to the beauty of nature in order to protest against change happening due to industrialization, institutions & sources of power. Poetry was used to comment on the society, using everyday language for accessibility and written as a reaction to urban life.

  • The main conflict is explored through a young man’s attempt to control nature, a conflict between man VS nature. This is also based of childhood experiences, bringin a tone of realism as it is a formative event in his life. The journey on the boat could metaphorically relate in the journey in taking the true extent of nature, introducing the theme of reflection

Title and Perspective:

  • Since it was be a prologue for “The Recluse”, the title reflects the fact that this poem is an introduction for a larger work.

  • Since the poem is autobiographical, the speaker is assumed to be a fictionalized version of William Wordsworth, revealing many personal details of his life, emphasized by the use of strong first person narration with the use of past tense. Wordsworth also uses many present participles for description such as “leaving”, “sparkling” and “glittering”. Through blurring the present and past, he shows the reader how this experience has shaped how he lives and how he still view the world.

Structure

  • The Prelude is an epic poem. They are lengthy, narrative poems that often focuses around a heroic protagonist and he legendary events, are considered to be one of the first forms of poetry and are typically written to incite a sense of awe in the reader. It can also be argued that the hero isn’t Wordsworth, but nature personified. Some critics say that the poem’s focus on nature mundane everyday life makes it seem underwhelming compared to most epics (e.g. Homer’s Odyssey). It is possible that he intended the adventure to be his spiritual growth, making the Prelude an epic at a metaphoric level.

  • The entire extract is a single stanza which emphasizes the overwhelming power of nature, heighted by enjambment, which helps to give a sense of a lack of control, makes the poem feel like a stream of consciousness and makes the reader feel breathless. If the reader feels overwhelmed, it helps to empathize with Wordsworth, which increases as the stanza drags on, contributing to the buildup of tension as the reader approaches the peak. It may also be structure this way as an allusion to John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, which is written with lengthy stanzas, iambic pentameter and is an epic poem. Wordsworth was also known to be inspired by his work. “Paradise Lost” is about the biblical fall of man whilst The Prelude provides a contemporary version of the fall against nature.

  • Parallelism (the use of grammatically identical/similar components repeated in a sentence or multiple sentences) is used in this poem, seen in how the speaker was before and after the revelation of nature’s power, highlighting how the experience aced as a catalyst in his development

  • A cyclical structure is employed to emphasize the change that took place during the journey was internal and psychological rather than external and physical - his journey beings and finishes in the same place, with subtle changes shown though linguistic echo. At the beginning, he stole the boat as he viewed himself as dominant and had no care for consequences. Whereas, at the end, he “stole” away as he feared the consequences of challenging nature’s omnipotence, becoming indicative of his humility and fear, causing him to retreat back to what is safe and familiar

Language

  • As the poem progresses and the speaker becomes overwhelmed by the mountain, the language becomes less sophisticated. At the start, the language is poetic and descriptive in words like “elfin pinnace: and “small circles glittering idly”. The revelation of nature’s true power renders him speechless and his descriptions become more simplistic and clumsy, shown in “a huge peak, black and huge:. The repetition emphasizes the sheer size of the mountain, perhaps Wordsworth couldn’t think of a comparison as it’s size is incomparable. His description focuses on simple statements of size and color.

  • “led by her” suggests the speaker isn’t in control of his actions and elevated blame from him for any negative actions. The parenthesis suggests that is was added later, implying that he was unaware of this control until his moment of revelation and realization.

  • Similes are used in order to try and help his readers understand his experiences, seeming like the speaker wants to share the knowledge he has gained, especially in nature’s power, in order to warn humanity against engaging in and supporting industrialization.

  • By romanticizing his memory of the event, its suggests that it had a big influence on him that it caused him to remember it as mythical and magical *his “little boat) transformed into an “elfin pinnace”), showing he was undertaking a very significant journey.

  • Motif of mountains is used to portray the underestimation of nature’s power. The speaker can be seen as symbolic of humanity as a whole. The definitive statement that “the horizon’s utmost boundary” shows humanity’s misplaced confidence and false sense of superiority. He is intimidated by the existential realization of his insignificance. It ties into the theme of humanity’s evil, also seen in “Paradise Lost’ as Wordsworth is showing how humanity’s innate hubris (confidence/pride) leads to the ignorance and offences against the forces they underestimate.

  • The ignorance of power is manifested in the “darkness” and lack of color as the speaker has realized that he’s been metaphorically living in the dark, so is naive and is unaware of his insignificance.