'A Thematic Analysis Of John Keats The Titans'

The poem opens with The Titans who have been cast out of the skies and seas by the Olympians and now inhabit a dark and threatening earth. Saturn rouses himself to renewed resistance and is led by Thea to where the other fallen Titans are assembled. The vale is damp, airless and shadowy: “Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn” (I, 2). Keats whether intentionally or not sympathizes with the Titans as he humanizes them though he does not indicate his opinion. The Titans not only feel great pain after the defeat but they are “heaving in pain” (II, 27) and Keats has made them appear mortal and vulnerable figures instead of mighty gods. The rest of the Titans assemble in an equally gloomy “den where no insulting light / Could glimmer on their tears” (II, 5–6) and their overthrow is accompanied by a parallel rebellion in a heavily animated nature: for the solid roar
Of thunderous waterfalls and torrents hoarse,
Pouring a constant bulk, uncertain where.
Crag jutting forth to crag, and rocks that seem’d
Ever as if just rising from a sleep,
Forehead to forehead held their

91) but on the whole, the Titans are characterised more by their “tears” (I, 158) and “their big hearts / Heaving in pain, and horribly convulsed” (II, 26–7) than by their stability. In spite of their immortality, their suffering can be explained only through the parallel of human loss, and it is therefore felt and experienced rather than explained or illustrated: “O tender spouse of gold Hyperion, / Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face” (I, 95–6). The Titans’ sorrow is certain in its physical and emotional wickedness: “Meanwhile in other realms big tears were shed, / More sorrow like to this, and such like woe, / Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of scribe” (I,