The Prelude Stealing the Boat Flashcards
Language
While the epic is written generally in past tense, Wordsworth uses present participles for description like “leaving” and “glittering,” showing his experience has shaped how he lives/views the world in the present
Speaker’s language becomes less sophisticated as he becames overwhelmed by the mountain: at the start the language is descriptive like “elfin pinnace” but at the end Wordsworth’s description focuses on simple statements of size and colour, repeats adjective “huge” to describe mountain
Similes warn humanity against engaging in the industrial revolution, by showing knowledge of nature’s power(boat went through water “like a swan”)
Structure
Epic poem - adventure on Woolworth’s spiritual growth and awakening to nature’s power
Single stanza - no breaks or pauses, causing the reader to feel breathless, shows overhwelming reaction to immensity of mountain and nature, with frequent enjambment and connectices and an increasing pace.
Parallelism in speaker’s rowing - at the start the speaker is easily able to move through the water in an “unswerving line,” but after seeing the mountain he starts “heaving through the water.”
Cyclical structure - change occurring during the journey was internal and psychological rather than external and physical: at the start he stole the boat because he viewed himself as dominant, but on his return “stole” is indicative of his humility and fear in face of nature’s true power.
Despite starting and finishing in the same place, there are subtle changes due to Wordsworth’s use of a linguistic echo: when the speaker sets out in stolen boat it’s “an act of stealth,” but when he returned home he “stole my way back to the covert of the willow tree.”
