This Is the End, My Friends

Now that the school year is almost done, soon to let out countless students for some summer fun, a world of possibility awaits, especially for those graduating and moving on to greater things. Sometimes it seems as though our time at school works to narrow down our lives; whereas before we were blank slates full of potential, now we have majors and potential career paths in mind. However, looking back on all that I have learned, the realization comes upon me that I am now more versatile than ever before. Thanks in part to a liberal arts education, I have honed my ability to learn about a broad variety of topics with quickness and ease, allowing me to adapt to whatever situation I am in, regardless of how new or different it may be. Although before I feared that I would be limited in my future choices by my education, I have indeed become a jack of all trades. With undergraduate classes soon to be a distant memory, I find myself feeling more free than ever before; I can do anything, live anywhere, and be what I want to be (at least in theory, with work). Lines 33-54 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude work to articulate this feeling of liberty, which he uses as a chance to explore his creativity. To draw the reader into this state of mind, he uses grand, evocative language and metaphor.

In order to make the reader understand the magnitude of Wordsworth’s new found freedom to develop his creative energy, he uses an escalating metaphor comparing it with wind. At first, creativity begins as a “sweet breath of heaven”, coming from Wordsworth’s belief that nature endows us with talents which we then nurture as opposed to acquiring traits over time. Then, it progresses to a “mild creative breeze”, seeming relatively harmless and perhaps a bit mediocre, as is often the case when developing one’s skills in creative pursuits. However, very quickly this idle breeze becomes a storm of great power, which Wordsworth describes as containing “Pure passions, virtue, knowledge, and delight, / the holy life of music and of verse”. Clearly, the freedom from responsibility Wordsworth has experienced has allowed him to direct his focus to his own devices and nurture his innate abilities to full strength. This grand explanation of how freedom allowed him to get in tune with his creativity gives the reader a sense of the immenseness of these events in his life.