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Ode to the West Wind Explication Percy Bysse Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind is a dramatization of

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Ode to the West Wind Explication
Percy Bysse Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind is a dramatization of man’s useless and “dead thoughts” (63) and Shelley’s desire from the Autumn wind to drive these “over the universe” (65) so that not only he but man can start anew. The thoughts are first compared to the leaves of trees but as the poem progresses the thoughts are paralleled with the clouds and finally the “sapless foliage of the ocean” (40). Shelley personifies himself with the seasons of the Earth and begs the West Wind to drive him away thus allowing him to lost and become the very seasons. In the end Shelley’s metamorphosis is realized and he becomes the very wind and the power with which he humanized throughout the poem.
The first three …show more content…

The West Wind is the breath of personified Autumn and when Shelley invokes this breath, “dirge” (23), and “voice” (41), he chooses to bring with him a fellow traveler, a “comrade.” (49) This traveler is much like him and is no less of a human than of a season of the year. Two other figures recur to Shelley. The clouds driven by the wind remind him of the “bright hair” blown about of “some fierce Maenad.” (20-21) He also imagines the wind waking a male and dreaming “blue Mediterranean.” (29-30)
Like Shelley as a boy these fellow travelers help humanize Autumn. In the first section Shelley characterizes himself as “an enchanter” (3) and a “charioteer” (6) enhances the vividness of the personification. By repeatedly addressing the West Wind in the second person as “thou” and “thee,” Shelley works towards achieving his purpose, his “sore need.” (52) The need to identify himself with the leaves of the forest, the winds, and as “One too like thee” (56), Autumn. Shelley imagines himself as Autumns wind-harp but embellishes it repeatedly with the composes own voice with “Be thou me, impetuous one!” (62) Shelley further parallels

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