summary of the old man travelling
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Answer:
The man is so demure that even the little birds along the road do not pay attention to him. His movements, starting from his face to his walk and gait, are one and the same. The old man moves like a man lost in thought. This man, one who is lost in thought, is “subdued to settled quiet.” This can be interpreted to mean that the man has a kind of quiet confidence about him. “He is one by whom all effort seems forgotten” means that the man appears effortless in his movements. Furthermore, while for others “long patience” requires strength and determination, this man has no need for it since he is naturally at peace. The old man’s peaceful presence is “so perfect” that even the young are jealous of it, even though “the old man hardly feels” it.
PLEASE MARK AS BRAINLIEST
(Old Man Travelling) from William Wordsworth’s “Lyrical Ballads”, seems on the surface to be about an old man who is travelling on his own to take leave of his son. However, at a deeper level Wordsworth is highlighting the loneliness which men suffer in the course of our life.
First of all, as I mentioned before, one of the main ideas of the poem is that men are born alone and we remain alone during our lifetime. This idea, connected to the romantic conception of the man, being himself in contact with nature, is patently obvious in the first four verses of the poem, where the poet is using the image of “little birds” and above all, the explanation of the traveller’s expression, the way he walks and even the fact that he is not moving with pain, but absorbed in his own thoughts.
A second remarkable idea is the one that the poet expresses in the tittle: “Animal Tranquility and Decay”. This is, our condition as human beings allows us to be conscious of the fact that we decay in the same way nature does, but the diffecence is that birds and nature cannot be conscious of it (so, they are just what they are, they cannot feel) and we are conscious of our limitations as human beings. Furthermore, it is not by chance that the protagonist is exactly an old man, one ”by whom all the effort seems forgotten”. The traveller is completely quiet walking and he is completely aware of the fact that he accepts his son dying in a short period of time, in the same way he is going to die as well some day, because our condition as human beings allows us to appreciate the pleasure of being part of the wonderful nature, but also implies that our irremediable final fate is going to be our death.
The old traveller seems to assume perfectly this intrinsic human condition because he answers normally when the poet himself as a narrator asks him about the objective of his travel (in the second stanza). The traveller tells the poet that he is going to “take the last leave of his son because he is dying in a hospital”. He shows a perfect harmony with the nature sourrounding him.
In my opinion, the poem is completely straightforward in meaning, because the poet is able to reflect perfectly this real connection between traveller and nature (first stanza) and the acceptance of his son’s death without pain as a consequence on being part of this nature.
On the other hand, the structure of the poem is quite simple. It is divided into two stanzas, the first one contains twelve lines and the second one contains eight lines with free rhyme. Wordsworth is the narrator and even in the second stanza, he participates having a conversation with the protagonist.
The poem is written in a very accessible language. The poet makes use of direct speech at the end to transmit the meaning of the poem to the reader by involving him into the situation. Finally, Wordsworth uses two archaic words in two occasions: the use of “hath” ,which means “has” and “doth” , which is “does”; also the use of the old-fashioned expression “to take a last leave of my son”, which is to say goodbye to someone because he is dying. He uses the adjective “old” in the tittle. He wants to highlight the decay suffered by human being. The one which is painful for most part of people, but not for the old traveller.
As a conclusion, I would like to say that I chose this poem because it was really shocking for me the way in which Wordsworth deals with so delicate a topic as it is decay and death. I really like the meanig of the poem because all of us make up a whole, which is the nature.