A* essay on presentation of mortality in 'When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be'
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Course
Unit 3 - Poetry
Institution
PEARSON (PEARSON)
Book
Selected Poems: Keats
An A* essay that received 30/30 on Keats’s presentation of mortality in 'When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be', with top A02 quotes and unique A03 context to impress examiners.
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PEARSON (PEARSON)
English Literature 2015
Unit 3 - Poetry
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How does Keats present mortality in “When I Have Fears That I May
Cease To Be” ?
Keats presents mortality as an isolating and scary experience in “When I
Have Fears” through the use of extended metaphor and meter. The first
quatrain begins with assonance of the “e” sound from “when I have fears
that I may cease to be” – this sets the tone and creates a mood of fear
that runs throughout the sonnet. Keats then goes on to reveal, through
the use of an extended metaphor around farming, that he fears he will
die before he has fulfilled his potential as a poet: “ before my pen has
glean’d my teeming brain/Before high-piled books, in charact’ry/Hold like
rich garners the full-ripen’d grain”. The use of the Shakespearean sonnet
form contributes to the idea of his potential greatness; by aligning himself
with Shakespeare through using this strict and restrictive form, he
suggests that he has similar abilities and could achieve the same success,
if given the time. He also breaks from iambic pentameter to spondee with
“high-piled”: this break in meter again emphasises the potential he is so
certain he possesses. Through his verb choice of “hold” in the simile “hold
like rich garners”, Keats’ ambition and hunger for fame come to light:
there is a permanence of the written word as compared to thoughts, and
Keats believes it’s imperative that he has a chance to capture his
potential in a more durable form, as so to leave his mark on the world,
and satisfy his desire for success.
In the following quatrains, Keats mourns for the other thing he fears he
will miss out on due to an untimely death – the chance of a “high
romance”. Here, “high” takes on two meanings: firstly, a great and
glorious romance, and secondly, “high” as in out of reach. Line 6 also
begins with pathetic fallacy: “huge cloudy symbols” – the clouds are
symbol of the lack of clarity around his future; the adjective “huge”
further emphasises the magnitude of uncertainty and anxiety he feels
over this matter, showing how mortality is a disorienting experience.
Coming to terms with his mortality has made Keats obsessive about how
long he has left to live: the frequent use of time adverbs throughout the
sonnet, eg “then”, “before”, “never”, shows us this much. He begins each
quatrain with “when”, and introduces the volta a half line early through
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