Critical Analysis Of John Keats's Ode To A Nightingale

John Keats opens “Ode to a Nightingale” by introducing his audience to a nameless speaker, who appears to be intoxicated. Within the first four lines of the poem, the speaker has listed multiple references to different drugs in an attempt to describe his sense of intoxication. When he realizes he is unable to relate this type of intoxication he hints to the audience, he is in fact intoxicated by the song of a nightingale bird. Sadly, the nightingale song is not enough to intoxicate the speaker; so in writer’s style, the speaker requires alcohol (specifically, red wine) to fully intoxicate himself. In stanza three, the audience is reminded of the unpleasantness that is life. The speaker explains his reasoning behind the necessity to intoxicate …show more content…
The nightingale is a small bird known for its voice, which can be heard during the day and night. Its name is derived from the abnormality of the bird singing during the nighttime. The nightingale bird has roots in mythology, which Keats utilizes in this poem. The original tale of the nightingale is in the Greek tale of Philomela. In this story, Philomela is raped and has her tongue cut out so she is not able to tell anyone what had conspired. After she figures out how to inform someone about what happened, Philomela and Procne (her sister) are almost killed. In an attempt to save the two sisters, the gods turn them into a nightingale and a swallow (Hunter). Keats recognized the significance of the mythological roots the nightingale contained; so he employed them within his “ode” or celebration of the bird. The tale of Philomela is not the only Greek story Keats reference in “Ode to a Nightingale.” The first reference of Greek mythology is in the fourth line of the poem, where the speaker is stating “one minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk.” The river Lethe is located in the Underworld, and is where souls were forced by Hades to drink and forget their memories forever. Keats creates an excellent parallel by utilizing this tale to the speaker’s desire to forget the world around him. The next reference to mythology is when the speaker referrers to the nightingale as …show more content…
Aforementioned in the summary of the poem, the speaker seems at a loss of words when attempting to describe how intoxicated he feels. Peculiar enough, the poet begins with the harshest of drugs to the most innocent. The speaker’s first attempt of explaining his intoxication is by the poison hemlock; the poison used in the execution of Socrates. The side effects of ingesting hemlock are the cessation of cardiac and respiratory functions (Brooks). When the speaker realizes this is not the correct depiction, he moves on to relating the intoxication to opiates. A lesser of the two drugs, yet still containing horrific side effects. Use of opium was rampant at Keats’ time, he was also suspected to be a user of the drug. Next in the de-escalation of drug references, the speaker migrates to the usage of wine for the majority of the poem. The whole second stanza is centered around red wine, dark enough to cause a “purple-stained mouth” in the speaker (18). The speaker even mentions the particular region of the wine’s production, Provence region in southern France. The speaker’s obsession with self-intoxication doesn’t end with these aforementioned physical drugs; he continues on to speak of his senses being overloaded, thus causing intoxication. He has already mentioned his euphoria for the sound of the nightingale, but now he talks of the nightingale’s