An Analysis Of William Wordsworth's Exploration Of The Natural World

In the boat stealing scene, readers see the alienation and exploration of the natural world previously discussed. “I went alone into a Shepherd’s boat,” says Wordsworth, establishing his solitude before any other aspect of the experience (1.82). In this scene, Wordsworth is closest to the “blessed babe” state. For this reason, he has little windows during which he comes close to encountering the Real. “Leaving behind her [the boat] still on either side / Small circles glittering idly in the moon / Until they melted all into one track” (1.93-95). The “small circles” are Wordworth’s windows to the Real. However, by the end of the scene, readers realize that Wordsworth has failed in his attempt to truly connect. After seeing the cliff rise up and brood over him, Wordsworth writes that, “In my thoughts / There was darkness, call it solitude / Or blank desertion; no familiar objects” (1.122-124). Here, readers see that, “the boy’s animation of nature apparently backfires, for the world both loses its natural character and fails to become humanized” (Richardson 16). Nature loses what was intrinsic to it in the first place, but also fails to reveal the Real which Wordsworth seeks. Readers can take this idea further, by noting Richardson’s belief that, “the experience gives rise to guilt and sorrow; the illusion of imaginative power maintains itself at a considerable psychic cost” (18). Not only has Wordsworth not been able to touch upon the Real that he felt as an infant, but he feels he has been deserted by it. The windows …show more content…
They “portray the child developing a sense of autonomy and attempting to master the object world to which he has been so recently introduced” (Richardson 16). That is, as a child moves away from the Lacanian “mirror stage”, his or her interactions with the world are what shape reality. Wordsworth explains