Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale"
Conflict & Resolution Analysis (10 Marks)
In John Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, the central conflict arises from the sharp contrast between the painful human world and the eternal world of the Nightingale. Keats portrays the "real world" as a place of immense suffering, defined by "weariness, the fever, and the fret." In the third stanza, he paints a grim picture of human existence where youth grows pale and dies, beauty fades, and consciousness itself is a burden because "to think is to be full of sorrow." In this world, time is a destroyer; everything is temporary, and physical decay is inevitable.
In direct contrast, the Nightingale inhabits an ideal world of timeless beauty. The bird is described as an "immortal Bird" because its song has remained unchanged for centuries. Unlike humans, the Nightingale is not conscious of death; it is a "light-winged Dryad" existing in harmony with nature. The poet attempts to bridge the gap between these two worlds using the "viewless wings of Poesy" (imagination), briefly joining the bird to experience a moment of perfect bliss.
The resolution lies in the realization that human beings cannot live in the world of eternal imagination forever. Just as the poet reaches the peak of his connection with the bird, the word "forlorn" acts like a bell, snapping him out of his trance and bringing him back to his "sole self."
The bird flies away, symbolizing that the ideal is unreachable for mortals. The poem ends not with a solution, but with a question: "Do I wake or sleep?" This suggests that the only "resolution" Keats finds is the acceptance that imagination is a "deceiving elf" that cannot cheat reality for long.
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