Eduqas GCSE Poetry Anthology - Excerpt from The Prelude - Character analysis in GCSE English Literature

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Created by: tommyellisx
Created on: 23-02-18 17:17


	About	Key Quotations
	The poem describes the sheer thrill and exultation of children as they skate in the gathering darkness of a frosty day. Wordsworth uses imagery of sound, sight and the natural world to bring alive the vivid and joyous experience. The poem has a nostalgic feel and Wordsworth looks back at the innocence and happiness of his childhood.	The poem opens with imagery to do with winter, such as “frosty”, and suggests the premature end of a wintery day. Images of warmth, such as “blaz’d” and “the sun” are contrasted with this. The use of verbs such as “wheel’d”, “hiss’d” and “flew”, such rapid movement, while the noun “rapture” suggests the intense enjoyment of the boys skating on the lake. The natural world is represented in the poem, with “woodland pleasure”, and “leafless trees”, while the humans are also portrayed as animals. The skaters are all “shod with steel” like “untir’d” horses, chasing the “hunted hare”. There is imagery to do with sounds, the pack is “bellowing”, the icy crags “tinkled like iron”, there is an “alien sound/Of melancholy”. Final words – “in the west/The orange sky of evening died away”, which suggests the vivid image of a sunset as we return to the warm glow of the evening.
	Structure	Context of poem
	The poem begins with the end of the day and the warm light of the setting sun reflecting in the cottage windows. In the middle of the poem, the young Wordsworth ignores his mother’s calls to come in for his tea and instead delights at skating with the other boys from the village. They are playing tag and chasing each other across the ice and this reminds Wordsworth of a pack of hounds hunting a fox. The end of the poem reflects the end of the day as the sun sets and the star appear.	William Wordsworth was one of the first and most influential of the Romantic era. The Prelude is nostalgic in its thoughts about his childhood and the intense feelings of delight he experienced when he was walked or, as a child, played in the countryside.

About

Key Quotations

The poem describes the sheer thrill and exultation of children as they skate in the gathering darkness of a frosty day.
Wordsworth uses imagery of sound, sight and the natural world to bring alive the vivid and joyous experience.
The poem has a nostalgic feel and Wordsworth looks back at the innocence and happiness of his childhood.

The poem opens with imagery to do with winter, such as “frosty”, and suggests the premature end of a wintery day. Images of warmth, such as “blaz’d” and “the sun” are contrasted with this.
The use of verbs such as “wheel’d”, “hiss’d” and “flew”, such rapid movement, while the noun “rapture” suggests the intense enjoyment of the boys skating on the lake.
The natural world is represented in the poem, with “woodland pleasure”, and “leafless trees”, while the humans are also portrayed as animals. The skaters are all “shod with steel” like “untir’d” horses, chasing the “hunted hare”.
There is imagery to do with sounds, the pack is “bellowing”, the icy crags “tinkled like iron”, there is an “alien sound/Of melancholy”.
Final words – “in the west/The orange sky of evening died away”, which suggests the vivid image of a sunset as we return to the warm glow of the evening.

Structure

Context of poem

The poem begins with the end of the day and the warm light of the setting sun reflecting in the cottage windows.
In the middle of the poem, the young Wordsworth ignores his mother’s calls to come in for his tea and instead delights at skating with the other boys from the village.
They are playing tag and chasing each other across the ice and this reminds Wordsworth of a pack of hounds hunting a fox.
The end of the poem reflects the end of the day as the sun sets and the star appear.

William Wordsworth was one of the first and most influential of the Romantic era.
The Prelude is nostalgic in its thoughts about his childhood and the intense feelings of delight he experienced when he was walked or, as a child, played in the countryside.

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