Summary Of Shelley's An Ode To The West Wind

The start of the 19th century brought many changes to Great Britain. The end of the Napoleonic war left the nation in famine and with a large unemployment rate mainly because workers needed during the war were now redundant. Workers had no vote and were prevented by law from unionizing, leaving them incapable to influence. Simultaneously revolution occurred throughout the world, especially on the other side of the Atlantic in America. The radical social thinking in the west influenced this period immensely. Therefore, in 1819 hundreds of thousands of workers assembled in St Peter’s Field, Manchester, and demanded the reform of parliamentary representation. The peaceful protesters were charged by cavalry killing 9 people and leaving hundreds injured. By this time, Shelley was exiled from England, treated like an outcast by his compatriots (). To show his support and to fight injustice he wrote. “An Ode to the West Wind” (1819) was written during this period. In the poem he pleads the wind to spread his ideals around the world. A few years later Shelley wrote “A Defence of Poetry” as a retaliation to how Utilitarian philosophers and the “material-minded” public undermined the creative community, displaying his thoughts on how poems, more

The “I” in this poem pleas the Wind to carry him and his thoughts “If I were a dead leaf thou mightiest bear;/ If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee”. And in “A Deference of Poetry” Shelley writes that “The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is Poetry” (444). As stated earlier, when the poem was written Shelley’s only way of addressing the injustice in his native country was through writing in an attempt to trigger change. In this case the “I” provides a medium for the poet to show his ideas and