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Question
What makes Ulysses seek newer adventures?
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Solution
In the context of the poem, Ulysses has grown old. He has experienced all daring adventures. He has won the hearts of people during the battle at Troy. Back home, as per the prophecy of Tiresias, he rules Ithaca for a brief time. But he is fed up with the conventional duties of a king. He laments his own uselessness as a ruler of idle people who lead a life like savages, just eating and sleeping. They don’t understand the over vaulting ambition of their adventurous king Ulysses who had moved earth and heavens in the past. He wishes to embark on his next voyage. It might be his last. He is quite sensitive to the moans of the seas tantalizing him and his compatriots to set sail quickly. He wants “to drink life to the lees”. Ulysses doesn’t want to bask in the glory he has earned in the past.
His inquisitive spirit is restless. He has seen much’ and acquired knowledge of various cultures of the world. But he considers all such experiences like an “arch” leading him to the unexplored or “untravelled world”. He wants to sail towards the area ‘beyond sunset’. He must shine in use as a sword but not “rust unburnished”. Yet at home, in the kingdom of Ithaca, he feels bored and yearns to truly engage with what is left of life. He is impatient for “new” experiences lamenting every day and every hour to seek “something more”. His quest for adventure and fulfillment, like the goal of Goethe’s Faust, is defined by the pursuit of new knowledge “beyond the utmost bound of human thought”.
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