Page 95 - DENG104_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_I

Elective English–I

Notes haven’t seen anything, he tells you, until you’ve seen the sea by moonlight or felt the gentle
breeze that comes in at dusk.
As your new friend continues to talk, he gets more animated, but also a little sad. He exclaims,
“I’d rather be a pagan living in the dark ages with no electricity, no music, and no cities
because then the whole world would look just like this beach, unpolluted by mankind; and
plus, I might get to see some weird mythological monsters that they drew pictures of in their
caves.” But there’s something funny about this little speech; it almost sounds as if he’s trying
to convince himself that he really loves nature. Why would he want to see monsters coming
out of the ocean? The only explanation you can come up with is that he isn’t satisfied with
nature just being nature; it has to be full of strange deities associated with mythology to meet
his standards. Weird, especially coming from someone who’s so into nature.

8.6 Settings

“The World is Too Much with Us” takes place near the ocean somewhere; in fact, it seems a
lot like a little speech somebody would give while sitting around a campfire on a remote
beach. It’s quiet, you can hear the waves coming in, and you can see the moon reflecting off
the water because you’re so far away from civilization that no street lights prevent you from
seeing this natural miracle. In fact, it’s one of those places that is so remote (you had to hike
over some rough terrain to get here, and all the mosquito bites will be a lasting reminder of
the lengths you went to find it) you almost forget about modern technology and start to think
about what the world used to look like before it became overpopulated and canvassed with cities.

You’ve made a camp for the night in a nearby meadow—no way you’re walking back through
those woods at night—that commands a remarkable view of the sea. If the beach weren’t so
remote, this meadow, or “lea” as your British friend insists on calling it, would surely have
been turned into a parking lot by now. The grass is really soft—“pleasant” is the right word—
like nothing you’ve ever felt before. The comfort of your seat near the fire, coupled with the
great view and the perfect weather, cause you to exclaim to yourself, “This is so incredible I
would exchange television, electricity, and indoor plumbing if only I could live here.”
The title “The World is Too Much with Us” sounds funny – we usually say “The world is too
much for me.” Funny-sounding things can often be interpreted in several ways, and this one
is no exception. First and foremost, it describes the condition of industrialized society. The
experience of the modern city, with all its people and shops, is overpowering; for it to be “too
much with” means something like “it’s so much I can’t handle it.” Just think of it as analogous
to how you feel when you see a really bright flash and have to close your eyes, or when you
scowl because you just bit into something that’s way too sour.
Two other possible interpretations depend on “world” referring not to industrialized society
but to the natural world itself. From this perspective, the title could mean something like
“human beings are a burden on the earth,” a parasite that upsets a natural balance. Alternatively,
it could mean that the natural world is “too much” for us because we have a lot of other things
to worry about, as in “I have things to buy and worrying about nature is just too much for
me to deal with right now.” All of these different meanings of the title are activated in the
poem, which is obsessed with the different ways in which people are too busy for nature and
no longer have the time or the ability to experience it.

8.7 Analysis

“The World is Too Much with Us,” by William Wordsworth, written between 1802 and 1804,
is a Petrarchan sonnet lamenting the lose of nature to modern society. It is a Petrarchan sonnet

90 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY