The Prelude

Question 1

What poems can you compare with The Prelude?

Answer 1

• Storm on the Island - Nature’s unpredictability
• Exposure - Nature’s power and psychological effects
• Ozymandias - Power of nature vs man
• Bayonet charge - Emotional reactions to fear
• Tissue - Nature, fragility, ephemerality

Question 2

‘An act of stealth’

Answer 2

• The speaker describes taking the boat as an act of ‘stealth’, which has connotation of both sneaky and sly, there is no doubt that the actions is morally wrong, but the speaker seems to feel no sense of this,
• He is selfish taking whatever he wants with no thought of the consequences

Question 3

positive imagery
‘circles glittering’
‘sparkling light’

Answer 3

Give a magical and celestial quality to the moment

Question 4

The poets ego and sense of power is growing, from the way his description of the boat changes
‘A little boat’ to ‘elfin pinnace’

Answer 4

• Pinnace is a light sailing ship
• The adjective ‘elfin’ imbudies a sense of magic to the scene

The poet is felling all powerful as if he is the hero of some mythical story

Question 5

The simile - ‘Heaving through the water like a swan’

Answer 5

It adds to this sense of power

Rich in imagery and figurative language and figurative language - all suggesting the speaker’s sense of power

Question 6

‘A huge peak, black and huge,/as if with voluntary power instinct/Upreared its head

Answer 6

The poet’s previous use of figurative and expressive language has deserted him here

The repetition of the adjective ‘huge’ shows a structural shift in language usage, highlighting the impact the mountain has on the speaker, it has drained him of all sense of power

• He realises that humans are not powerful, nature s truly powerful

Question 7

One long stanza

Answer 7

We are overwhelmed by the immensity of the poem
- this overwhelming aspect reflects how young Wordsworth himself was overwhelmed by his experience with nature

Question 8

Enjambment

Answer 8

Suggests the overwhelming effect that nature has upon the speaker

Question 9

Repetition of ‘no’

Answer 9

• Shows how the speaker’s pride from the opening line has vanished.
• Not only is he now not confident of what he knows, he can only explain things in terms of what he does not know