The Lady Of Shalott Analysis

Insanity changes the way we perceive the people and world around us, in the poem “The Lady of Shalott” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the lady’s developing insanity warps her perception of the land she’s been cursed not to see. Her outlook on her situation darkens as her gripping insanity takes hold of everything she had left. Through cacophony, pathetic fallacy, and repetition it is shown how the lady’s being stuck in her own version of Plato’s allegory of the cave leads her to insanity. Lord Tennyson’s poem alludes to Camelot and the Lady of Shalott. The actual Lady of Shalott was a woman from arthurian legend named Elaine of Astolat. Elaine of Astolat was a woman who’s unrequited love for Sir Lancelot (a knight of King Arthur's round table) caused her death. Due to the lady’s instructions after her death she is placed in a tiny boat with a lily in one hand and her final note in the other. Her body is then sent down the river Thames to Camelot where the knights find …show more content…
The settings that are described throughout the poem shows strong pathetic fallacy. In the beginning of the poem the Lady of Shalott seems to be happy and the setting around her reflects that; the weather is nice and the flowers, barely and river are “reaching towards the sky”. As the poem progresses however the weather becomes treacherous, “In the stormy east-wind straining,/ The pale yellow woods were waning,/ The broad stream in his banks complaining,/ Heavily the low sky raining”(116-119), to fit the mood of the lady escaping the insanity that is her curse, and singing herself to her own death. A further pathetic fallacy example is when the lady breaks the curse and swans start to die, the swans warble wildly which fits the mood of her breaking the