William Wordsworth Expostulation And Reply Analysis

In Expostulation and Reply, William Wordsworth is responding to this passage with a dramatic change in the prevalent thinking of the day. He is asked by his friend why he wastes his time on earth sitting in nature when he should be learning in the scholarly ways of the time such as reading and writing. Wordsworth brings up the controversial point that nature is the ultimate teacher and everything that he needs to know is in nature, not in the books of dead men. In the poem the transition from the very opening lines to the ending lines show a huge difference in opinion between the two men with both proposing very interesting, thought provoking concepts of a man’s time on earth. The two very different ways of thinking seen in the poem may seem …show more content…
Wordsworth’s reply is in direct response to Matthew’s line about drinking spirits from the dead men which Matthew reveres so much. Wordsworth responds to Matthew’s critiques, “Nor less I deem that there are powers, Which of themselves our minds impress, That we can feed this mind of ours, In a wise passiveness.” This quote is so thought provoking because of the radical shift in thinking that Wordsworth shows from the rest of the time period. Throughout time, men have learned through reading and writing and only been recognized as an intelligent and learned man through these ways. Wordsworth proposes the idea that he in fact does not need these traditional scholarly pursuits to be a learned man because all of the learning done by books is knowledge that has already been interpreted by those before. However, in nature the greatest teacher of them all, every single moment is a new experience speaking to the individual instead of the masses like the books. The world in Wordsworth’s view is constantly speaking to us and perception of the moments is not under the control of the human. Instead, the world is constantly impressing words upon us just by being in nature and “dreaming” as Wordsworth refers to it as. Since nature is constantly speaking to Wordsworth he deems the idea of losing himself in books a loss because of the knowledge that he would be ignoring from nature. While many in this time would view Wordsworth’s view as a bad thing to sit idly in nature letting nature speak to him, he sees this as the ultimate way of educating oneself in life and to not do so is a total waste of nature. Matthew’s argument that earth does not care about each individual because many has come before him does not faze Wordsworth because of the fact that the learning is in the moment and up to the passiveness of the situation. Through the passiveness,