do you think the highwayman has been introduced as a hero in the poem ? give reason for your answer
Answers
Explanation:
According to his own report, Alfred Noyes wrote “The Highwayman” over a two-day period in 1904 when he was 24 years old. (The poem was published in 1907 in the collection Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems.) “The Highwayman” is a romantic ballad, which means that it is a narrative poem that celebrates passion and adventure. Set in the England of King George III, the poem tells the story of a highwayman, or robber, who has fallen in love with Bess, an innkeeper’s beautiful daughter. The lovers are betrayed by a jealous stablehand, and soldiers attempt to trap the highwayman by taking Bess hostage. In an oddly sadistic scene, the soldiers tie Bess up with a gun pointing into her chest, and then wait in ambush for the highwayman. When Bess hears the highwayman approaching, she warns him by shooting herself; he hears the gunshot and escapes. The soldiers pursue him, however, and he, too, is killed. The poem is notable for the way in which it reverses our expectations concerning light and dark imagery. Ordinarily, we think of the clarity of daylight in positive terms. In “The Highwayman,” however, Noyes associates the daylight with the destructive powers of mankind, and he identifies the nighttime with the mysterious forces of nature.