When You Are Old Comparison

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Literary Analysis Essay- Eldorado and When You Are Old

When You Are Old and Eldorado are both narrative poems that portray the concept of spending one’s life doing something that they will later regret. Eldorado depicts a man who spends the entirety of his life searching for a place supposedly filled with wealth called “Eldorado,” only to find that he must die in order to get what he wants. When You Are Old is about a man telling a woman, whom he had an unrequited love for, that later in life she will regret not loving him. Both When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats and Eldorado by Edgar Allan Poe express emotions about choosing to live life wisely through the use of archetypes, imagery, and diction. Archetypes of mountains are used in both When You Are Old and Eldorado to convey the importance of a sagacious way of life. In When You Are Old, William Butler Yeats uses the archetype of a mountain to represent a spiritual journey of “Love”, which he personifies. Yeats writes “…Love fled/ And paced upon the mountains overhead.” The speaker is saying how his love is out of the women’s reach because it left and placed itself upon the heavens where she will …show more content…

In Eldorado, the word pilgrim is used to express how the shadow will lead the speaker to what he is seeking for. Poe writes the phrase “He met a pilgrim shadow.” This shows how the knight has found something that might lead him to Eldorado, because pilgrims journey to sacred places.In When You Are Old, the word pilgrim is used to speak about the woman whom the speaker loved. Yeats writes “But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you.” The speaker is saying how all of the other men just wanted her for her looks, but he wanted her because of her personality and soul. In both poems, the word pilgrim is used to display something

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