Ulysses

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1842

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Travel

Forty-six lines of this 70-line poem meditate on Ulysses’ desire to travel (Lines 6-21, Lines 30-32, Lines 44-70). That’s more than half the poem, thus travel is an important motif. In the first stanza, travel is compared to life. Ulysses says, “I cannot rest from travel: I will drink / Life to the lees” (Lines 6-7). These lines equate traveling to drinking life like wine. Also in the first stanza, Ulysses says his name and reputation have become synonymous with travel: “I am become a name; / For always roaming with a hungry heart” (Lines 11-12). These lines equate constant travel, or “always roaming,” with Ulysses’ identity. Finally, in the last stanza, travel is compared to death:

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew (Lines 62-64).

In these lines, Ulysses imagines their ship sinking will transport him and his crew to the “Happy Isles,” or afterlife, where they will reunite with Achilles, who died during the Trojan War. What he feels is that he can only continue to expand his mind through travel, and remaining on Ithaca would be a kind of death in itself, so the dangers of sailing again is a much preferable demise.

Edges

Ulysses is preoccupied with edges because the allure of travel, in Ulysses mind, is associated with edges:

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move (Lines 19-21).

Here, the edge, or “margin,” of the “untravell’d world” is the horizon line. The horizon is desirable and “[g]leams” because Ulysses can never quite reach it. Instead, the horizon advances at the same pace Ulysses does, so it’s always just out of his reach and “fades / [f]or ever and forever when I move.”

Later, Ulysses yearns, “To follow knowledge like a sinking star, / Beyond the utmost bound of human thought” (Lines 31-32). Here, the edge is more metaphorical than the horizon line—it’s the “bound,” or border, of human thought. Nonetheless, it’s just as impossible for Ulysses to cross the bound of human thought as it is for him to reach the horizon. As Ulysses’ advances, these edges will only move forward.

Finally, in the third stanza, Ulysses tells his mariners, he intends “[t]o sail beyond the sunset, and the baths / [o]f all the western stars” (Lines 60-61). Like the horizon line and the “utmost bound of human thought,” these are edges Ulysses will never be able to reach, let alone cross. Thus, Ulysses obsession with edges will never be satiated.

Shakespeare

“Ulysses” is written in blank verse, the form most commonly employed in William Shakespeare’s plays. Additionally, in the first stanza of Tennyson’s poem, Ulysses sounds a lot like Shakespeare’s character Hamlet. In 4.4 from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the eponymous hero says, “What is a man / If his chief good and market of his time / Be but to sleep and feed” (Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. MIT Shakespeare). These words of Hamlet’s echo in Ulysses’ condemnation of the people of Ithaca “[t]hat hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me” (Line 5).

In 4.4, Hamlet also says,

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and god-like reason

To fust in us unused (Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. MIT Shakespeare).

The last line in this phrase “[t]o fust in us unused” is echoed in Tennyson’s line: “To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use” (Line 23).

Finally, in Shakespeare’s famous “To be, or not to be” soliloquy from 3.1, Hamlet compares death to “[t]he undiscover’d country from whose bourn / [n]o traveller returns” (Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. MIT Shakespeare). This comparison of death to an “undiscover’d country” echoes in Ulysses desire “[t]o follow knowledge like a sinking star, / [b]eyond the utmost bound of human thought” (Lines 31-32).

The first stanza of Tennyson’s “Ulysses” reads more like a soliloquy than a dramatic monologue. (A soliloquy is a speech where a character is alone on stage, or believes himself to be alone, and speaks his thoughts out loud to himself.) The fact that the first stanza of Tennyson’s poem seems to echo Hamlet’s soliloquies reinforces the impression that, at this point in the poem, Ulysses is speaking to himself.

In fact, some critics argue the entire poem is a soliloquy, not a dramatic monologue, and that Ulysses is talking to himself on his deathbed, “[t]hus he can greet his dead sailors, and thus he can look forward to exploring the last great mystery, death” (Landow, George. “Alfred Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses.’” The Victorian Web). These critics think Ulysses is, in essence, hallucinating that he is surrounded by his mariners.

Whether a reader accepts this interpretation, what is certain is Tennyson was a great admirer of Shakespeare; and when Tennyson was on his deathbed, he called—not for mariners—but for copies of Shakespeare’s plays to be brought to him (Decker, Christopher. “Shakespeare and the Death of Tennyson.” Victorian Shakespeare, vol. 2, 2003, p. 131). Shakespeare was also very much with Tennyson when he wrote “Ulysses.”