PB Shelley: An Analysis Of Ode To The West Wind

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Ode to the West Wind is an ode written by P.B Shelley in 1819. It’s an ode about the west wind. The wind is personified both as Destroyer and preserver(93). It’s seen as a big force of nature that destroys the unhealthy and the decaying in order to make a way for the new. The personification of the wind as an enchanter is a typical characteristic of Shelley’s poetry. This personification of the wind can also be called a ‘mythical poetry’.
Shelley divides the ode into five stanzas and each part of the poem consists of 14 lines.
In the first stanza the poet addresses the wind as a “breath of Autumn's being”(92) and as ‘Wild’. The west wind is a great force that drives the dead leaves to faraway places like ghosts from a sorcerer. The wind
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It rejects the mood of the third stanza. Here in the penultimate the west wind becomes a personal force. The poet says that if he were leaf, wave or cloud he could experience the almighty power of the west wind. The poet wants to be dominated by the wind. In his childhood, he had the power and strength to outrun the wind, but now he no longer has that power as he has been weakened by the problems, and burdens of life and he is no longer the one he used to be in his childhood.Now he faces many problems in his life which have drained all of his power and strength and he now looks for a help from the west wind. He is kind of a slave of the …show more content…
Trauma and desperation which the poet experiences now make way for the new hope. He (the poet) offers himself to the air in the same way as the forests, the ocean and the sky do. He asks the west wind to be the minstrel who can take out a deep autumnal tone from him and make harmonic music from him in the wood. The autor offers himself to the wind in order to be used as a "lyre" for this purpose. Thus, the produced music music may be sorrowful but also sweet. The autor then continues to compare himself to a simple hearth with sparks and cinder- meaning that the poet still has some power left in him. He asks the west wind to distribute this power like it spreads 'cinder' and 'sparks' among the human

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