The analysis of the Eagle’s Alfred Tennyson

The analysis of the Eagle’s Alfred Tennyson

    1. Sound Values

a.       Rhyme

The eagle is a poem that consists of six lines which divided into two stanzas that have a pattern of rhyme aaa in the first stanza and bbb in the second stanza. The rhymes that used by Alfred are:

-          End rhyme: it is because the position of rhyme is in the end of line.

Ex: ………….. hands

      ………….. lands

      ………….. stands  

-          Exact rhyme: it is because the position of rhyme is near each other. It means that the first rhyme is in the first line and the second rhyme is in the next one, in the second line and then the last rhyme is in the third line.

Ex: ………….. hands    (1)

      ………….. lands     (2)

                  ………….. stands    (3)

b.      Alliteration

In this poem there is alliteration in its first and second line:

“He claps the crag with crooked hands”

It is clear that there is a repetition of consonant ‘c’.

“Close to the sun in lonely lands”

That line consists of alliteration which repeats consonant ‘l’ in the words of lonely and lands.

c.       Assonance

There is assonance which repeated interior vowel sounds in ‘claps’, ‘crags’ and ‘hands’.

d.      Onomatopoeia

Tennyson used onomatopoeia in his poem, The Eagle. He used the words ‘claps, crag and crooked’ in the first line as the sounds that produced by an eagle with its claws.

2.      Versification

a.       Rhythm and Meter

This poem is begun with the unstressed sound and followed by stressed sound. It means that there is an iambic in this poem. All of lines in this poem are in iambic pattern.

This poem consists of eight syllables in each line which divided into four feet called tetrameter.

b.      The form of stanza

There are two triplets rhymes aaa and bbb in this poem because each stanza consists of three lines.

3.      Narrative

The eagle gives us a description of an eagle which is in the first triplet tells about how the characteristics of eagle are and the next one tells about the eagle’s world and nature.

The kind of narrative in this poem is epic. It is about heroic narrative with little verbal grace and almost no sense of mystery.

4.      Emotion

The emotion is a soul of poem which can make a poem more beautiful. The eagle used an emotion of sad that depicted from the feeling of lonely that felt by the eagle.

5.      Ideas

a.       Allegory

-          The use of ‘sea’ depicts a life which has up and down like a wave in the sea.

-          The use of ‘thunderbolt’ can be an allegory because it is like a lightning or the speed or the energy that produced by the eagle .

-          The use of ‘close to the sun’ could be expressed more directly, but in using these words Tennyson accomplishes two goals. First, by bringing the sun in to describe how high up in the air the eagle is, he uses hyperbole, or exaggeration, to associate the eagle with a sense of grand majesty. Tennyson would not have believed that an eagle’s altitude could reach anywhere near the sun’s, but this association makes the eagle seem, like the sun, more powerful than anything of this earth. Placing the eagle near the sun also alludes to the myth of Icarus.

-          The world of the sky is like a mirror of the earth, complete with its own "lands." Even parts of the sky located at a relatively short distance from the earth (a thousand feet, perhaps) seem closer to the sun than to us. Nonetheless, we get to imagine what it's like to look down on the water from such a great height.

b.      Symbol

-          The eagle is a vision in Tennyson’s mind, a bird he never actually saw while trekking. Perhaps he imagined it in the mountains around him near the Mediterranean.

-          It talks about mythic figure and the eagle as a symbol of however many things (time, age, the human condition, the romantic era, etc).

c.       Historical context

The eagle was written in 1831 during a trip through the French Pyrenees but the poem did not appear until twenty years later, in the seventh edition of his poems. It was written when Tennyson was hiking in the Pyrenees, he saw above him on a crag, literally close to the sun than he was.

The eagle more generally fits into the mode of the mid-nineteenth century, when the romantic vision of the world experienced its resurgence at the end of the Enlightenment.

d.      Myth

-          “The Eagle” as being a reference to the story of Icarus, who constructed a set of wax wings and flew too close to the sun, then fell when the wax melted. The images in the poem that look directly to this myth are few and vague; a number of sun myths, sky myths, and bird legends could be invoked by the right reader with a long reach for stories.

-          “Close to the sun” resonates with the Icarus /Daedalus myth. Daedulus was the master craftsman who escaped from the labyrinth on Crete along with his son Icarus.

-          “He falls” is the heroic defeat of the mythic hero, of the one who flew too close to the wrested fire from the gods.

e.       Allusion

In Greek mythology, Icarus and his father Daedalus escaped from imprisonment on the Isle of Crete by making wings out of wax and feathers and flying away, but Icarus became too ambitious and flew close to the sun; the wax melted, and Icarus fell into the sea and drowned. By placing the winged eagle near the sun, Tennyson seems to be implying that it may be too confident of its own ability.

f.       Archetype

Tennyson was using his eagle as the representation of the archetypal tragic hero.

The Eagle

He claps½the crag½with croo½ked hands;                 (a)                    iambic tetrameter

Close to½the sun½in lone½ly lands,                            (a)                    iambic tetrameter

Ringed with½the a½zure world, ½ he stands.             (a)                    iambic tetrameter

The wrin½kled sea½beneath½him crawls;                   (b)                    iambic tetrameter

He wat½ches from½his moun½tain walls,                  (b)                    iambic tetrameter

And like½a thun½derbolt½he falls.                             (b)                    iambic tetrameter