Imagery in Ode to the West Wind by P.B.Shelley

This shows that meteorological conditions are able to affect a character’s thoughts and alter their feelings. As has been noted, Shelley accentuates the description of spring to express the hope and renewal bestowed upon the creature by the exemplifications of the weather.

Throughout Shelley’s work, the creature struggles to conform to society, alone from his first moments - abandoned by his creator - he is given no proper upbringing, and abhorred by society. He grows up in hiding and fear, his only interactions with others ending in violence. Hence, seems only natural that his desperate need to conform would lead to violence. The need to “belong” is an essential “human” desire, however this sense of belonging his completely dependent on one’s upbringing.

As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak”4 The following day, Victor inquires about the “origins of thunder and lightning” to which his father replies with, “Electricity.” One cannot help but associate this with Victor’s passion for harboring electricity of scientific use. This one resonant moment, caused by nature, sears itself into Victor’s mind. This foreshadowing of Victor’s future endeavors to conquer nature is highly contradictory to Shelley’s attempts to represent the power of nature, which is quite fascinating. Furthermore, what can almost be described as a medicinal quality of nature is represented when Victor returns to Belrive. “I remained two days at Lousanne, in this painful state of mind. I contemplated the lake: the water were placid; all around was calm, and the snowy mountains, ‘the palaces of nature,’ were not changed. By degrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me.”5 This interpretation of nature’s healing abilities certainly connects the Romantic’s viewpoint on nature, which helps validate Shelley’s representation.

Shelley uses Victor’s lack of humanity as a metaphor for mankind’s negligence of the dying essence of romanticism in the time the book was written. It is evident in the chapter where Victor uses the serenity of nature to attain tranquility in a troubled mind. The visual imagery created in Montanvert accentuates the

Mary Shelley used this poem to show the freedom of one's future and the change(s) that will come with it. The poem also mentions one little thing such as a dream or a “wandering thought” can ruin a bigger idea. In the story, it was recently addressed that before the poem, “If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free”. This passage can be implying that the non-essential things in life are the things that poison us or make us change. The poem’s purpose in this part of the book is to amplify the speaker's last words of the paragraph that state, “...we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that word may convey to us.”. It makes the message of “things will change” very clear to the

In the passage Shelley skillfully paints an intense image in the audience’s mind. Although it should be an exciting moment for Victor, Shelley purposely makes the scene dark, drab, and dreary. She chooses illustrate this scene in a sinister way because this moment is only the beginning of the horrors come. She achieves her dark image by incorporating details such as the lighting, weather, time of day, and even the time of year. All of these details come together to effectively paint a vivid picture of Victor and his creation as he breathes life into it. The imagery in this passage also greatly affects the tone of the passage.

Through the development of Victor and the creature’s relationship, questions are raised about the responsibilities of the creator and what values make us human. Victor makes a creature that he abandons to the harsh world where he is not understood. This shapes the way the creature is developed and supports the ‘blank slate’ idea of Shelley’s context. Shelley challenges the values that assume we are born with a certain fate and those who are bad deserve bad lives. She puts forward the Enlightenment idea that humans are all born with the potential to be good. Shelly shows this through the relationship between Victor and the creature, who both need love and compassion; aspects of human nature that are given through nurture. The creature had been capable of impulsive acts of kindness as he rescues a child from the river and does acts of kindness for the De Laceys. Shelley uses this to represent the potential for good in human nature and that people are not predetermined but can be turned to evil if neglected: "I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend". These are the results of Victor’s blind ambition, self pity and disregard for his responsibilities, all unfavorable aspects of human nature.

Before delving too deep into Shelley's novel, it is very important to label the ideologies and connections behind Romanticism as a literary period, and a literary movement. The poetry and prose of the Romantic movement meant to show a obvious connection to the imagination. Romanticism, at it's most basic understanding, which was mainly active through the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, can be separated from the preceding Enlightenment by recognizing that in the Enlightenment, there was a “preoccupation with reason in

In Mary Shelley’s novel, nature plays a vital role in the development of the plot. Nature is considered a female part because Mother Nature is the collective personification of life. Nature is life-bearing and nurturing, as females are to their offspring. In spite of nature being feminine, Victor

Shelley’s presentation of specific and powerful diction helps illuminate his strong thoughts about the mutability of humans. Shelley’s use of the two words “poison” and “pollutes” in the third stanza of the poem alludes to his thoughts about the human mind mentioned in his biography, “We rest.---A dream has power to poison sleep; / We rise.---One wandering thought pollutes the day; / We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep; / Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:” (Shelley, 1734). Shelley was frequently bullied as a child and was expelled from school for being an alleged atheist; thus, he had notions before writing the poem about man’s corruption and “man’s general

The romantic period was characterized by a marked withdraw from the techniques of the literary period and ideas, that introduced more rational and scientific in nature. Romantic poetry and prose, by contrast, was intended to express a new and visionary relationship to the imagination (Fitch). The romantic poets were always seeking a way to capture and represent the sublime moment and experience (Fitch), the more personal experience, the better. In many romantic poems the authors and their writing are identical. This is one of the ways Shelly embraces the literary period and at the same time matches the specific romantic ideal. She takes Frankenstein and describes him not by her personal experience or in her own voice, but yet she still is still characterizing a single quest to achieve the sublime. Victor Frankenstein’s quest was to make a creature out of raw

The naturalistic imagery that pervades Mary Shelley’s Mathilda acts as an underlying theme for the incestuous affair between Mathilda and her father and its unruly consequences. Their relationship is a crime against the laws of Nature and causes Mathilda to become ostracized from the very world that she loved as a child. Shelley’s implementation of naturalistic imagery accentuates the unlawful and subsequent ramifications of the relationship between Mathilda and her father and contrasts the ideals and boundaries of the natural and spiritual worlds.

Shelley in his poem ‘Ode to the West Wind’ has used similes in his poem. He states that, “the leaves dead are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.” He also states that, “the winged seeds where they lie cold and low each like a corpse within its grave.” As observed from these examples, the poets will use these techniques to assist in easier interpretation of the poem.

In Percy Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” considers the subject of cyclic regeneration through the depiction of nature. Shelley watches the destructive changes in nature created by the autumnal wind with a desire for the following spring and revival. In the seasonal process he sees a typical model for conceivable revolutionary changes both in his own life and in the current social and political structure of his nation. The usage of nature demonstrates Shelley’s gratefulness towards beauty and the natural world. His “Ode to the West Wind” fundamentally engages the dynamic brilliant power of the west wind to issue him that vitality which has the capacity to change the world. He describes how powerful the wind is and communicates his poem in a shrewd method that paints readers a picture of how great and amazing the wind can be. Through the utilization of