In Drear Nighted December

Question 1

key themes

Answer 1

• forgetting/ losing
• humans vs nature

Question 2

forgetting/ losing

Answer 2

• Compound adjective “drear nighted december” – d is heavy, long vowel sound slows the pace (relaxation and lost train of thought)
• “Happy, happy tree” – anadiplosis as juxtaposition (no one is happy to lose something) – “never, never”: lack of complaint is at fault.
• “Thy branches ne’er remember Their green felicity” – harsh times become embedded, metaphor for the forgotten perfection of the Garden of Eden (Keats not religious but a romanticism)
• “Sweet forgetting” – implied oxymoron (forgetting isn’t sweet)
• Lose of time (references to cycles) juxtaposes “fretting” (ridges formed when water freezes to ice) and “frozen time”.
• “Ah!” Exclamative (Typical feature of Keats poems)– forgetting is a blessing.
• “But were there ever any Writh’d not of passed joy?” – indicates there is good reason to forget (sadness involved in transient happpiness) – Keats attempting to forget grief surrounding his family.

Question 3

humans vs nature

Answer 3

• “Thy bubblings ne’er remember” – reference to nature’s cycle + explores the idea of human condition by highlighting its cyclical + inevitable nature.
• “Frozen time” – indicative of how humans and nature are trapped in the cyclical nature of their respective existences (time is frozen because nothing can change our rigid existential trails)
• “The feel of not to feel it” – oxymoron, expresses human impulse to block out what we wish to deny, being less human in doing so.
• “When there is none to heal it Nor numbed sense to steel it” – denial is a way of copying with “passed joy” – being numb means no longer being vulnerable to pain – “steel”: idea that numbness takes away pain.
• “Nor frozen thawing glue them from budding at their prime” – tree will no longer be stuck in its winter stat (cyclical nature of human existence)

Question 4

form/ structure

Answer 4

• Sonnet
• Specific rhyme scheme and meter – cyclical nature
• Iambic pentameter
• Sense of form and balance while allowing Keats to explore complex emotions and ideas within a concise + structured framework.

Question 5

context - inspiration