Ulysses

In "Ulysses," the speaker is the Ulysses (or Odysseus) of Homer's The Odyssey. Tennyson imagines what this hero would feel like after having spent some time at home in Ithaca after all his adventures, his 20-year quest to return home, and his triumphant driving out of his faithful wife Penelope's suitors. Again, this is a dramatic monologue, so (I've told you who the speaker is), what is the situation, and whom is he addressing? How does he feel about his wife, his people and his son? What does he intend to do? One tip: the poem is in three verse-paragraphs: consider them separately and together.

Ulysses has been back from his twenty year journey for some time now. He is again ruler of Ithica with his beloved wife and strong son. Here, he is the speaker and is addressing perhaps not just those men who had traveled with him solely, but the whole of his people. He feels useless “an idle king”, just repeating the same actions to a people who don’t know him and so he feels do not care, “I mete and dole//Unequaled laws unto a savage race,//That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know me not.” Perhaps he just feels so disconnected though. Ulysses wants to life live and feels he must leave to do it. “I cannot rest from travel; I will drink//Life to the lees.” He lists of past experiences and says how they are a part of him, “I am part of all I have met” So obviously he is planning on leaving again. The island will be left to his son’s care, who he trusts to handle the job. “This is my son, mine own Telemachus,//To whom I leave the scepter and the isle” Ulysses hopes that Telemachus can change the people, make them more gentle than they had become. “by slow prudence to make mild//A rugged people, and through soft degrees//Subdue them to the useful and the good.” Which shows us that right now, Ulysses doesn’t find his people to be mild and good. The thing I find interesting is that he doesn’t speak much of his wife. Ulysses says at the start that she is “aged” but nothing else. In the final section I thought perhaps he spoke to her when he said “you and I are old” but the more I look at it, the more I feel like he’s talking to the sailors he spent his time with.