To Sleep Flashcards
1
Q
key themes
A
- time
- death
- admiration
- escapism/ comfort
2
Q
time
A
- sleep is time to escape harsh realities
- cycle of night + day (“still midnight…empowered from the light’”) fleet and dreams followed by difficulties the day brings
- longing to be in a stasis of sleep
3
Q
death
A
- focus turns from focus on comfort of sleep to parcels between sleep + death (“seal the hushed casket of my soul”) - Keats imagines death provides a similar relief from his conscience/ worries
4
Q
escapism/ comfort
A
- Personifies sleep throughout (“O soft embalmer of the still midnight shutting, with careful finger”) – calm and tranquil, welcoming with the power to take Keats away from harsh realties (His family dying)
- “Gloom-pleased eyes” – sleep is a release from the difficulties of the day + is pleasurable/ a relied.
- “Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:” – degree of comfort and escapism sleep provides – use of a colon puts emphasise on divine (suggests sleep is pure pleasure and of great value/beauty)
- Positive, soothing and gentle image of sleep + its escapism (careful, soft, smoothest sleep, thine hymn, lulling charities)
- Struggles are becoming too difficult to escape from (“burrowing like a mole” – simile implies the thoughts are becoming more prominent, reiterating his inability to escape the day) – lengths between sleep increase (distance from “embower’d”, “ensnared”, “poppy” (opium), “burrowing”)
5
Q
admiration
A
- Personification of sleep alludes to the idea that Keats is appealing to it for relief from the difficulties of life.
- Imperatives imply desperation and extreme unhappiness in life (“save me”) – struggles are becoming worse (“breeding my many woes”)
6
Q
form
A
- 14 lines – usually with iambic pentameter
- Ode in sonnet form
- Lyrical voice used throughout
- No final cuplet
- Simple rhyme scheme to begin (ABAB CDCD) – control over sleep and escaping the struggles – more complex rhyme scheme shows him losing control.
7
Q
A
