Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson Questions and Answers

Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson Questions and Answers Pdf Download

Ulysses Marks 5

Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson Questions and Answers Pdf Download

1. Who is Ulysses ? What is his ideal of life?

Or,

“To follow knowledge, like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.” -Estimate Ulysses’s ideal of life in the light of the above lines and point out the modern elements in this ideal.

Ulysses is the Greek hero of the ‘lliad’ and the ‘Odyssey’ of Homer. He was one of those great heroes, who brought about the fall of Troy. As narrated in Homer, he fought for ten years on the battlefield of Troy and spent ten years more in wandering through different lands and seas. He returned to his home, island of Ithaca after a long absence for twenty years.

Tennyson’s poem Ulysses presents his hero after his return to and settlement in his kingdom at Ithaca. He presents him after his own outlook on life.

Tennyson’s Ulysses, infact, differs from the hero of Homer’s epic, the Odyssey. He is not a mere chivalrous knight and powerful leader, like his Homeric counterpart. He is, above all, an idealist, who moves with an insatiable thirst for the unattainable ideal of life. His utterance illustrates and emphasizes his great mission of life and his robust dynamic vision. Here the poet makes his hero quite apart from his Homerick counterpart.

Tennyson’s Ulysses does not like to pass his days in his island home at Ithaca in the company of his ‘aged wife’ and rugged people. Such a static life seems monotonous and soul-killing to him. He is haunted with a spirit of romance and adventure. He desires to leave this idle life and embrace a life of endless voyages and alluring visions.

Ulysses’s yearning has no end. His purpose of life is to see the unseen, to know the unknown and to attain the unattainable. His is not a circumscribed goal, which, when attained, leaves nothing further to ask for. His motto of life is to pursue new knowledge, new thrill and new experience without any halt. To him the essence of life lies in movement, and not in rest, in aspiration, and not in mere attainment”How dull it is to pause, to make an end.”

Tennyson’s Ulysses is a Homeric figure. But he is found to breathe the spirit of modern times. He is, in fact, an embodiment of the modern passion for knowledge, for the exploration of its limitless fields, for the annexation of the new kingdoms of science and thought. He is infused with the restless aims of the Victorian age that was agog with new inventions and new knowledge. Ulysses, Tennyson’s hero, bears the germ, the spirit and the sentiment of the modern age in his resolute pursuit for new activities and enterprises, in his iron determination to stand boldly against all the crosses of life. Here Tennyson puts much of his energy and resolves into his hero.

In Ulysses’s bold assertion—”To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”—is felt a rapturous joy of fight with the stiff opposition of life. Here Ulysses, the hero of some forgotten days, set ms to be animated by Tennyson with all that he perceives in a modern man of science and knowledge, dreams and desires.

2. Bring out the difference in the ideals of Ulysses and Telemachus.

Or,

“The poem ‘Ulysses contrasts two different ideals of life”Elucidate critically.

Or,

“He works his work, I mine.”

-Bring out the contrast implied.

Ulysses and his son Telemachus stand for two different ideals of life. The father and the son are sharply contrasted in their approach to the ideals of life. They uphold two different modes of living-one of ideality and the other of reality.

Ulysses is an idealist, who bears in his heart an insatiable thirst for the unattainable ideal of life. He is a visionary, a dreamer of the unseen, a seeker of the unknown. He is not at all pleased with a slothful life in which he is matched with an aged wife and made to rule savage people. He is haunted with the gleams of the untravelled world and hunger for an adventurous life of experiences infinite. His delight of life is to move always, to march into the abyss of the unexplored. His heart is startled with a deathless yearning for a resolute determination and a rapturous joy to fight with the opposition of life.

But Telemachus presents a different picture. He is not, like his father, an idealist. On the contrary, he is a practical man of this world, who knows and performs faithfully all his public and domestic duties. He knows how to manage and rule his ‘rugged‘ people. He does not feel, like his father, any repugnance towards them. Of course, he is not possessed of the visions of his father. But he is a perfect ruler and family head. Telemachus lacks his father’s idealistic approach to life. But he fits himself better in a material world and prizes what Ulysses ignores and despises.

Ulysses and Telemachus are complementary to each other. The world requires both the ideals, represented by the old father and the young son, for its healthy growth and natural progress.

3. How does Ulysses exhort his mariners? What impression do you form of Ulysses from this exhortation?

Ulysses, disgusted with the unbroken monotony of his work-a-day life, as an idle king, feels an inward urge that makes him restless. There runs through him a deep yearning for new experiences and knowledge so as to make the best use of the rest of his life. He calls his mariners and exhorts them to begin a new voyage of discovery. They must sail to the unknown seas beyond. They must shake off their dull, humdrum existence at Ithaca and embrace the danger and darkness of the seas limitless. They have, of course, grown old and lost much of their old physical strength and energy. But they are not dead, and may still do ‘some work of noble note! It is not too late for them to seek a newer world! Ulysses urges upon his men to sail on and on till they die. They can, of course, no more be proud of the physical ability with which they fought on the battlefield of Troy. Nevertheless, they still retain their old mental strength-their iron will and undaunted spirit.

The exhortation of Ulysses to his mariners clearly brings out the mission of his life. Ulysses represents the questing human spirit that can never rest, and is always allured to action by the call of the unknown. He longs for a goal of ideal perfection, never to be fully attained in this mortal world. His purpose of life is,

“To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars“, he dies.

until Ulysses seems to have an unconquerable mind that no thought of death can ever daunt or deter. His unswerving will-power knows only ‘to strive, to seek, to find and yield’. Herein he is a hero and idealist.

4. “To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.” -What did Ulysses mean by these words ? What was the goal to which moving? Does the passage have any significance today ?

By these words, Ulysses meant all out-efforts in quest of a great ideal, without any submission to odds and difficulties. He had the noble zeal to spend every moment of his life profitably by gaining new knowledge and new experience. He bore in him an undaunted spirit, which no misfortune could deter, no labour could exhaust. The above line sharply brings out this great aspect of Ulysses’s character.

The goal to which Ulysses was moving was no common thing. His desire was a narrow one, which, when realized, left nothing more to look for. His yearning had an illimited span, and sought to see the unseen, know the unknown and attain the unattainable. His motto of life was ‘to follow knowledge, like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought.’ Haunted with the restless passion for new knowledge and new experience, Ulysses decided to move after a life of endless voyages and inspiring visions. His purpose held-

‘To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars‘ until his death.

5. “I Will drink Life to the lees.”

Who is the speaker ? What does he mean by ‘drink life to the lees’? How has he spent his life so far? How does he propose to spend the rest of it?

Ulysses of Tennyson’s poem after the same name is the speaker.

By the term ‘drink life to the lees,’ Ulysses refers to his desire to exhaust all the possibilities of life. Just as a glass of drink can be enjoyed to the last dregs, so, too, Ulysses proposes to utilise the blessing of his life to the last point.

Ulysses has a checkered career. He has ‘enjoyed’ and ‘suffered greatly alone and in the company of his beloved crew. He has faced ‘the thunder and the sunshine’ with an unfailing spirit. He has ‘seen and known’ much, and received no ignoble honour from different countries. As a great warrior, he ‘drunk delight of battle’ with his peers ‘far on the ringing plains of windy Troy’. He fought there even with gods, with a dauntless breast. He has gathered, in short, a great variety of experiences both on lands and on the wide sea.

Now Ulysses rules the hilly country of Ithaca. But the work of an idle king does not at all suit him. A desire to see and learn more new things almost maddens him. He cannot rest from travel. He must drink ‘life to the lees’.

Ulysses, therefore, proposes to spend the rest of his life not in rest and inaction, but in ceaseless movements and activities. The best part of his life is over, and he will live only a few years more. But he is determined to use every moment of his short life, till left, profitably in order to gain new knowledge and experience. He resolves to ‘follow knowledge like a sinking star beyond the utmost bound of human thought’. Ulysses has no circumscribed goal. He yearns for seeing the unseen, knowing the unknown and attaining the unattainable. His purpose of life is ‘to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars’ till his death. He is now old. He has, no doubt, lost much of his youthful strength. Yet, his spirit has remained fresh and strong. He is still animated with an iron will that knows only ‘to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’

6. Bring out Tennyson’s attitude to life and outlook on death, as enunciated in the Ulysses.

Ulysses, like The Lotos-Eaters, is a mature specimen of Tennysonian poetry. This is not merely technically brilliant, but also contains a sober and deep philosophy of life and death in the human world. The poet is found to propagate in the poem certain ideals, and the poem is not less interesting in this respect.

The poem Ulysses has its origin in Homer’s epic Odyssey. Tennysonian thoughts are here actually found expressed in the framework which is Homeric. The poem offers a sharply philosophic outlook that embraces both life and death.

Ulysses presents a philosophy of action. This is the gospel of action which a modern man of science and knowledge seeks and prefers. Tennyson’s hero is here quite positive in his assertion that life is work and rest is dullness and death.

“—How dull it is to pause, to make an end”

Ulysses is determined to follow knowledge and adventure to the last limit. He can never ‘rest from travel and ‘rest unburnished’, not ‘to shine in use. His objective is clear, categorical ‘to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield’. He is a life-long seeker, voyager on the sea of life. His attachment to life is intense.

Again, in Ulysses, the hero bears a philosophy, robust and spirited. He takes life quite in earnest, and is not afraid of death. He gives out distinctly the optimistic idealism of a scientific-minded person who knows death inevitable, but is determined to do something noble before the end to prove himself not unworthy of human dignity and power. His purpose holds ‘to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars,’ until he dies. Death is to him a natural end, but only after a glorious adventurous life. His is an approach that has a triumphant defiance of the power of death :

‘Death closes all, but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet to be done”.

Lastly, Ulysses has a strong yearning for a life of action, and remains ready to die in harness and honour. He is certain that death will complete his venture of life and take him to the happy island where the great persons, whom he knew previously, are.

7 . Evaluate Tennyson’s Ulysses as a dramatic monologue.

Or,

Do you consider Tennyson’s Ulysses as a dramatic monologue? Answer with arguments.

A dramatic monologue is a dramatic poetical work in the first person. Here the person concerned, a man or a woman, is found to express his or her experience or inclination, thought or feeling all by his or her own self. In fact, an imaginary narrator is placed here in a dramatic situation to give out his or her thought and reaction under the stir of a situation, intensely exciting.

In Tennyson’s poem Ulysses, the hero is the sole speaker. The poem is actually a monologue of Ulysses. This monologue gives out his high morale and undaunted spirit to defy all struggles and obstacles and even to face the terror of death. Ulysses’s speech is an outspoken declaration of his present decision and future action, and idealises the grandeur of his character.

Of course, the essence of the dramatic monologue lies not in any external action but in the excitement of a mind that obviously affects the character of the speaker. According to Walter Pater, ‘the dramatic monologue is pre-eminently the poetry of situation’. In Ulysses the situation is definitely not as exciting as in Browning’s ‘The Last Ride Together, ‘Porphyria’s Lover, or ‘The Laboratory? Nevertheless, the poem has a situation Ulysses’s momentous decision to leave his throne to his son Telemachus and set out with his old comrades to an unending voyage to know and see more and more till his death. His highly heroic and idealistic character starkly comes out in his address to his old comrades. –

Here the poem is definitely a successful dramatic monologue.

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Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson Questions and Answers

Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson Questions and Answers Pdf Download

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