Cuchulain's Quest

793 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Write symbolism of yeats poetry

In William Butler Yeats’s The Yeats Reader: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose Cuchulain in “At the Hawk’s Well” is destined to fail his quest for eternal life because it would disrupt his journey as a hero. The first sign that the quest should not be attempted is the Old Man’s description of the land, depicting it as a desolate land for the deceivers of men. The Old Man says that he was once like Cuchulain when he arrived at the well, showing that he is doomed to stay there until his body rots. Lastly, the Old Man foresees that the Woman of the Sidhe will make Cuchulain’s children will die at his own hand if he does not leave. It is necessary for Cuchulain to fail at achieving eternal life for him to thrive as a hero, because …show more content…

While he has never heard of Cuchulain, the Old Man sees Cuchulain’s clothes and correctly assumes that he is a bloodlusted warrior eager to lust after women and then says to him, “There is no house to sack among these hills / Nor beautiful woman to be carried off” (94-95). The Old Man makes it clear to Cuchulain that he did not arrive at a welcoming place, this is no place for a warrior hero. However, the hero ignores this and wishes to stay near the well, but the Old Man pushes harshly says back, “No! Go from this accursed place! This place / Belongs to me, that girl there, and those others, / Deceivers of men” (124-126). Cuchulain is not wanting on the hill, showing that this is not meant to be a part of his journey. While Cuchulain pushes on with his quest, his ignorance of the Old Man shows that he not ready to become a …show more content…

. . The well was dry, I sat upon its edge / I waited the miraculous flood, I waited / While the years passed and withered me away” (128, 131-133). The Old Man is trying to tell Cuchulain that he will have the same fate as him if he does not leave the hill. Abandoning the quest for eternal life is essential to Cuchulain’s journey as a hero because he cannot wait for the well forever. Unfortunately, he is still not ready to leave until he hears the cry of a hawk. Cuchulain hears what he thinks is the cry of a hawk, but is told by the Old Man that it is the Woman of the Sidhe. The Old Man then tells Cuchulain about the horrors of the Woman of the Sidhe. There falls a curse On all those who have gazed in her unmoistened eyes . . . It may be that she will kill your children . . . Or you will be so maddened that you kill them With your own hand. (167-168, 176,

Show More
Related

  • W. E. B. Dubois's Views Of African American After The Civil War

    1151 Words  | 3 Pages

    After the Civil War, African Americans encountered great discrimination and suffering. During this era, two influential leaders emerged from different philosophical camps. Brooker T. Washignton of Virginia and William Edward Burghardt Dubois of Massachusetts proposed, different means to improve African Americans’ conditions. These men had a common goal to enrich the black community. However, the methods they advocated to reach these goals significantly differed.

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Bull Moose

    360 Words  | 1 Pages

    The strength of the old moose is impressive. On his death march, he nonetheless comes "lurching" and "stumbling" in ponderous and powerful strides to "the pole-fenced pasture''- the edge of civilization. A crowd quickly gathers, a crowd of men and women, old and young - all notable for their insensitivity and lack of respect. They confuse the moose with one of their own domesticated animals, like the cattle or collie or gelded moose or ox, failing to see the nobility and ancient wisdom of this moose from "the purple mist of trees." The scene becomes obscene as men "pry open his jaws with bottles" and "pour beer down his throat." The symbolic crown of thistles hammers home the innocent suffering perpetrated by these giggling and snickering buffoons.

    Read More

  • Deciphering Wangerin's Dun Cow: An Allusive Tale

    946 Words  | 2 Pages

    What a comfort that came over Chauntacleer, as a Dun Cow lay beside him with the outmost reverence. Though it never spoke a word, a feeling of comfort came from the Dun Cow throughout Chauntacleer’s inner most being.

    Read More

  • Keats and Longfellow

    706 Words  | 2 Pages

    Time is endlessly flowing by and its unwanted yet pending arrival of death is noted in the two poems “When I Have Fears,” by John Keats and “Mezzo Cammin,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Keats speaks with no energy; only an elegiac tone of euphoric sounds wondering if his life ends early with his never attained fame. He mentions never finding a “fair creature” (9) of his own, only experiencing unrequited love and feeling a deep loss of youth’s passion. Though melancholy, “Mezzo Cammin,” takes a more conversational tone as Longfellow faces what is commonly known as a midlife crisis. The two poems progressions contrast as Keats blames his sorrow for his lack of expression while Longfellow looks at life’s failures as passions never pursued. In spite of this contrast, both finish with similar references to death. The comparable rhyme and rhythm of both poems shows how both men safely followed a practiced path, never straying for any spontaneous chances. The ending tones evoking death ultimately reveal their indications towards it quickly advancing before accomplish...

    Read More

  • old english journies

    811 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the poems “The Wanderer”, “The Wife’s Lament”, and “Cuchilainn's Boyhood Deeds” there are journeys that each of the characters go through in the poems. In The Wanderer and “The Wife's Lament” the characters are dealing with the lose of a what they called life. In “Cuchilainn's Boyhood Deeds” the young man in the poem is seeking glory and honor. The poem dapple in both a physical journey and a mental or emotional dilemma. In “The Wanderer” the warrior is sent off in exile and he dreams of finding a new lord and a new hall to become apart of. In “The Wifes Lament”, the wife is also living in exile because he husband family has separated them; she images a life where she isnt so lonely anymore. “Cuchulainn's Boyhood Deeds” is about a boy who imagines himself doing heroic deed to gain favor, honor, and to become a legend. Each of the characters has a physical journey that are in the mist of, but while in the middle of those trial they are also faced with emotional pain and longing for a better life.

    Read More

  • 1984 And The Second Coming

    754 Words  | 2 Pages

    "The blood-dimmed tied is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned". As many currently see our society today, Yeats was in fear of what the future had in store, and felt it necessary to warn society of their abominable behavior. All of the good in the society has been taken over and overwhelmed by the horrible actions. No longer do ceremonies, or acts of kindness, take place, which Yeats believes is a direct effect of the loss of youth and innocence. "That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle". This quote from "The Second Coming" informs the society that if they do not begin to correct their transgressions against one another as a whole they will awake the anti-Christ. The anti-Christ will come to claim his Jesus and correct the predicament that they have gotten themselves in to.

    Read More

  • Judge Somers

    1112 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the poem titled Unknown the character tells a story about a hawk he shot then tried to befriend. The whole poem is a metaphor for what I think is a story about a friend the Unknown had hurt, then tried to help and gain back the trust of. The Unknown talks about how he wounded the bird, then placed him in a cage, then tried to feed him, but the bird just stayed mad at him. When people hurt someone it’s hard to gain back their trust, especially by trying to force them to do so. By “caging’ the bird the Unknown is just trying to force his friend to trust with him again. Near the end of the poem lines fourteen through fifteen say “Daily I search the realms for Hades For the soul of the hawk, That I may offer him friendship”, I take this as the Unknown saying that his friend had a soul from Hell by not finding the compassion to forgive him, especially after the Unknown had helped his friend. The poem never indicates that the Unknown and the “hawk” got along together, but I imagine they did

    Read More

  • Bigotry's Victim Poem Essay

    844 Words  | 2 Pages

    The symbolism in the poem paints a ghastly picture of a man’s life, falling apart as he does his best, and worst, to keep it safe from himself. In lines 1 through 8 (stanza one), he gives a brief description of an incident in his life where things have gone wrong. “When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind/Repose trust in his footsteps of air?/No! Abandoned he sinks in a trance of despair,” He uses these lines to show the lack of control he has over his actions, how his will to change his circumstances has weakened. He is both the hind with the person he is tormenting, and the tiger that

    Read More

  • To Build A Fire By Jack London

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    Foremost, the theme of this story is that ignorance can lead to poor decisions because the man ignored his surroundings. An example of this is when the man ignored the advice and warnings given by the old-timer from Sulphur Creek. It stated on page 4 in the 3rd paragraph “It certainly was cold, was his thought. That man from Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth

    Read More

  • Change and Changlessness

    807 Words  | 2 Pages

    There is always change in a persons life or loved one. No matter what happens something is always to be an outcome of it. In the poems, “When You Are Old”, “Lake Isle of Innisfree”, “The Wild Swans of Coole”, “The Second Coming”, and “Sailing to Byzantium”, Yeat’s shows the tension of change and ability. All of the poems show some kind of change no matter what it involves. Change can make you feel like nothing is the way that it was once before. You can sometimes not be too pleased with the way that your life is leading you and you need to make a change in some way to be happy again. When making changes in your life, you have to be sure not to make a religious change, you must always remember who is the creator of all things possible in your life. Think in a way that in years from now, what will still live on and be remembered in a positive way, those are the things that you need to cherish most in life. Life, love, hope, or death; it all proceeds to one ending: change.

    Read More

  • Summary and Analysis of The Squire's Tale

    604 Words  | 2 Pages

    After the revelry of the night before, the next morning everybody but Canacee remained asleep until late. She had dreamed of the mirror and the ring and thus had her first satisfying rest in a very long time. As she went out walking that morning with her maids, she came across bleeding peregrine falcon that cried in anguish. It had maimed itself. Canacee picked up the falcon and spoke to it, a power she had gained from the ring the knight had given her. The falcon told her a tale of a handsome tercelet as treasonous and false as he was beautiful.

    Read More

  • An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

    1770 Words  | 4 Pages

    In William Butler Yeats' poem, "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," he focuses on man's inner nature.  He touches on the many jumbled thoughts that must race through one's mind at the point when they realize that their death is inevitable.  In this poem, these thoughts include the airman's believed destination after leaving Earth, his feelings about his enemies and his supporters, his memories of home, his personal reasons for being in the war and, finally, his view of how he has spent his life.  Through telling the airman's possible final thoughts, Yeats shows that there is a great deal more to war than the political disputes between two opposing forces and that it causes men to question everything they have ever known and believed.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of 'The Fall Of Hyperion'

    1691 Words  | 4 Pages

    Yet this reversal by death from warm life to deathly coldness detracts nothing from the other feature of the hand, that is, it’s being capable. The hand is still capable of grasping, perhaps even more so than when it was alive. However, there is a critical agreement on the poem’s extraordinary capability of anticipating and manipulating the reader and of preserving the poet’s own life or afterlife through this process. It is interesting that they do not add the capability of the poem and its negativity and make them into negative capability, not to mention relate it to the negative capability advanced by Keats. His choice of the word capable in “This living hand” alone is made familiar by the fame of “negative capability” as Keats’s poetic manifesto. In his letters Keats uses the term mostly in relation to the exposition of his idea of negative capability, and it makes only two more appearances other than in “This living hand” in Keats’s entire poetic work, one in Endymion and the other in Hyperion. The poem is negatively capable, at once in the commonplace sense that its doing is threatening and forcible with the poem’s speaker in his icy tomb. That is, the addressee is bound to exercise Smithian sympathy, which Keats phrases as “negative

    Read More

  • He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

    770 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...fortable with being poor; this is shown in line 6, "But I, being poor, have only my dreams". He is unwilling because by taking no action he shows that he wouldn't "spread the cloths under her feet", because he would never obtain the cloths; shown in line 5 and 7, "I would spread the cloths under your feet", but instead "I have spread my dreams under your feet". Lastly, he is false in my eyes, because I see this poem as prevarication due to the idea that he is lying not to the reader or to his beloved, but to himself; Yeats falsely believes that he is in love with Gonne. Love is when a person is both physically and spiritually, or mentally, attracted to a person who would be willing to sacrifice and be faithful to the first person in the same way that he or she would be faithful to and sacrifice for him and her, while being in harmony with and a benefit to him or her.

    Read More

  • Use of Dramatic Contrast in Yeats' Poetry

    726 Words  | 2 Pages

    This refrain enforces his disgust at the type of money hungry people that the Irish have become. In the third and fourth stanza, however, Yeats completely changes the tone of his poetry. He praises the romantics of Irish history, such as Rob...

    Read More

More about Cuchulain's Quest

Open Document