Selfishness In The World Is Too Much With Us

With possessions and machinery such as iPods, GPS systems, advanced voice-recording, photo-shooting, video-taking cellular phones, one can securely say that the present world is fully consumed by materialistic goods and behavior. Society has gotten so caught up with flaunting their valuables and questing to unearth more that they have completely forgotten to slow down and simply savor nature. In his poem, “The World is Too Much With Us,” William Wordsworth displays an ignorant world in a constant quest for material possessions and so the betrayal of society’s denizens to their beautiful natural resources. On the contrary, in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," by William Butler Yeats, the speaker describes how one can obtain peace through nature

Wordsworth, a romantic poet of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries brought a unique perspective to poeticism (“William Wordsworth,” 2017). A man who, according to Asha Jain, a writer for Language In India, “… does not approve of sordid pursuits of life.” (Jain). Despite this and many other’s interpretation of his work, there has been a great deal of disagreement among students in classrooms across America when it comes to how to interpret William Wordsworth’s poem, “The World is Too Much with Us.” Some students believe the poem is a lament to the Christian’s lack of appreciation for the world around him or her. Others claim the poem paints a picture of humanity’s ignorance at large. On the one hand, those who consider the poem

William Wordsworth 's poem “The World is Too Much with Us” is a Romantic era poem that was first published in 1807 and is written in Italian Sonnet form. The main theme of the poem is that people have become desensitized to nature and no longer care about it. Also in the last six lines of the poem, the sestet is used to provide a solution to the octave, which is that in order for humanity to progress spiritually they need to become more involved with nature again. Additionally, in the poem Wordsworth implies that one of the reasons why people don’t connect with nature as much is because, people in society have

In “The World is Too Much With Us”, William Wordsworth accuses human evolution to have lost its connection with nature. In the first line Wordsworth says, “The world is too much with us" this phrase likely meant that the world is too full of humans who are losing their connection to divinity and even more importantly, to nature. The speaker tells the reader that everything in nature including the ocean and the wind is in synch with each other, but mankind has fallen away from this connection and is now “out of tune." Humanity has become an inconvenience to the world because we are out of harmony with nature. Wordsworth explains that people, through their consumerist lift styles, can no longer identify with the natural world and have lost their

From the first line, “The World Is Too Much with Us” clearly depicts the values of the Romantics’ love of nature. The persona states how,

The reason Wordsworth wrote this poem was to express the beauty of all nature and how we take its beauty for granted. He is wishing to convey that we should acknowledge nature because we are nature and nature is in all of use. Also that we should admire its beauty

In William Wordsworth's sonnet "The World Is Too Much with Us" the speaker conveys his frustration about the state in which he sees the world. Throughout the poem the speaker emphatically states his dissatisfaction with how out of touch the world has become with nature. Typical of Italian sonnets, the first eight lines of the poem establish the problems the speaker is experiencing such discontent about. Subsequently, the next line reveals a change in tone where the speaker angrily responds to the cynicism and decadence of society. Finally, the speaker offers an impossible solution to the troubles he has identified. Through each line, the tone elevates from dissatisfaction to anger in an effort to make the reader sense the significance of

Wordsworth questions the amount of recognition that nature gets from people in today society. He almost uses a guilt trip method to make his reader ask themselves if they have given nature the tribute it deserves. When I was assigned to read this text, I found myself so wound up in school and activities and busy work. So much so that I hadn’t had time to enjoy things around me and the things out the window or under my feet. “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: little we see in Nature that is ours; we have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!” (page 790, line2) This text approached me at a perfect time to help me to step back and appreciate the small things that surround me each day. Senior year can be overwhelming more than once and it is always a refreshing breath to stop and smell the roses, metaphorically and literally. Therefore, I am thankful for the impact that this text had on me and the timing of its

Multiple actions of lying and deception can lead to horrific consequences changing the lives of family, friends, and one true love. In the play, “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare, two teenagers meet each other and instantly fall in love. Their families not only don’t get along, but actually loathe each other. The boy, Romeo, is a Montague and the girl, Juliet, is a Capulet. Throughout the play they try everything they possibly can to be together. Romeo ends up being banished from the town the two lovers live in because he killed a man named Tybalt. This causes Juliet to become upset and take actions that lead to life alerting events. She ends up faking her death causing Romeo to kill himself, which leads Juliet to taking her own life. In the end, the two lovers are no more. Who is to blame for the two teenagers tragic ending? Juliet’s selfish actions brought about the unnecessary death of Romeo and herself.

This is a critical analysis of two poems – The world is too much with us by William Wordsworth, and The Unknown Citizen by W.H. Auden focusing on how the two poems highlight the mundane drudgery of life. It is a drudgery, and one that people do not even recognize because they are consumed in leading materialistic ways of life, conforming to the state and the society or both.

William Wordsworth's poem The world is too much with us is a statement about conflict between nature and humanity. The symbolism in his poem illustrates a sense of the conviction and deep feelings Wordsworth had toward nature. He longs for a much simpler time when the progress of humanity was tempered by the restriction nature imposed. Wordsworth is saying in this poem that man is wasting his time on earth by not appreciating nature around him. He is looking but not beholding. "We have given our hearts away" (4) means that we have sold the part of us that is from the earth (man which is from dust) in order to make other things more important than appreciating life; such as, money or

The nature of mankind is inherently selfish. Every action one takes is in their best interest, making decisions with the intent of benefitting themselves in the end. This selfishness is seen in all people, even if some do not realize. Selflessness is just an illusion. One may think the actions they choose are based off of pure intentions, but in the end they still gain personal benefaction in some way. Selfishness is a built in instinct. People need to survive and are constantly looking for ways to do so. One common strategy is compromise. People cooperate not to appease the other side, but to get the most out of the situation for themselves. Compromise, although seemingly for the good of the people, is overwhelmingly based on self-benefit. People are smart enough to know that without cooperation, they could end up with nothing. This strategy maximizes one’s own success.

Despite constant style and content changes within poetry throughout history, “God’s Grandeur,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, is very comparable to the poem, “The World is too Much with Us,” by William Wordsworth. These poems’ greatest similarity lies in their themes. They each describe society and its lack of care for the natural world, where mankind is too preoccupied with duties and material things. The most obvious difference between the poems is the tone they end with—Hopkins’s poem starts with a sardonic tone and ends with a more positive stance towards nature and God by expressing a belief in renewal and redemption through the power of God. Wordsworth’s poem, inversely, remains cynical throughout and in the end the speaker wishes for his

Wordsworth believes that society stands so far from Nature that he wishes to convert to

“The World Is Too Much with Us” represents societies absent connection with nature. Right off the bat, Wordsworth repeats the title of this poem to emphasize a Romantic element. The first couple of lines begin with Wordsworth stating that the modern world is losing the battle to materialism. "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; /Little we see in Nature that is ours; /We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon" (Wordsworth 2-4)! In an