Page 163 - DENG104_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_I

Elective English–I

Notes 14.7 Speaker Point of View

Who is the speaker, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
The speaker in this poem is almost, but not quite, a fully-fledged character; he’s somewhere
between the shadowy impersonal speaker that we assume is between the poet and the poem
every time we read poetry and find an actual character who interacts with other characters in
the poem. Even before the speaker starts talking about himself by saying, “I this” and “I that,”
we know that there is a speaker here. Not only does every poem have a speaker, but this
speaker is addressing the West Wind, calling it “thou” and invoking its aid. That must mean
there’s someone doing the invoking, someone talking to the “thou” – an “I.” In fact, we could
make that a rule: for every “thou,” there’s an “I” lurking somewhere.
We know that this speaker is concerned about sending his ideas out into the world for other
people to experience. He knows, or thinks, that his ideas aren’t any good; in fact, he describes
them as “dead” and “withered.” But he still wants to get them out there, because they might
provide an opportunity for other people to develop their own ideas. He feels incapable of
doing this on his own because of something that has happened to him. It might be some
specific traumatic thing, but it might just be the general pain of living. He only refers to it as
“the thorns of life” (54).
We also suspect the speaker might be a writer or even a poet, because he likes to pun on the
word “leaves,” which could be things that fall off trees but could also be pages of books. He
also refers directly to the poem itself within the poem: “by the incantation of this verse /
Scatter...my words among mankind!” (65-6, 67). So it’s not just Shelley writing a poem about
this speaker – the speaker himself knows about and is composing the poem.

14.8 Theme

Theme of Man and the Natural World

In “Ode to the West Wind,” Nature is grander and more powerful than man can hope to be.
The natural world is especially powerful because it contains elements like the West Wind and
the Spring Wind, which can travel invisibly across the globe, affecting every cloud, leaf, and
wave as they go. Man may be able to increase his status by allowing Nature to channel itself
through him.

Theme of Transformation

As the speaker of “Ode to the West Wind” feels himself waning and decaying, he begs the
wind to use him as an instrument, inhabit him, distribute his ideas, or prophesy through his
mouth. He hopes to transform himself by uniting his own spirit with the larger “Spirit” of the
West Wind and of Nature itself.

Theme of Mortality

The West Wind in Shelley’s ode is depicted as an autumnal wind, preparing the world for
winter. As a result, the poem is filled with images of death and decay, reminders of both
natural and human mortality. The speaker hopes that the death of one world will be inevitably
followed by a new rebirth and a new spring, but the poem leaves this rebirth uncertain.

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