How Does Tennyson create Character in "Ulysses" and "Tithonus"?

Ulysses is unafraid of the sea, and is thus unafraid of life and death. In the last two lines the poem settles into powerful and regular iambic rhythm, perhaps representing the rhythm of oars and illustrating Ulysses determination, strength of mind and will to do what he desires.  ‘To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield’ reiterates this, as Ulysses conveys that if you give up on your dream that you do not have strength of mind.

The poem is structured into four sections of one long stanza, like a stream of consciousness that is whirring around inside Ulysses head. This contributes to the narrative in a subtle way because it is symbolic of the sea of life that will not end, the fact that we can only voyage along the sea and be strong and not give up. Ulysses heroic desire to discover new worlds and to fight life to the end makes him a memorable character.

‘Tithonus’ is similar to ‘Ulysses’ because it is also a dramatic monologue. A single character whose words reveal his identity speaks the entire text. The lines of the poem take the form of blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter).  As a whole, the poem falls into seven paragraph-like sections of varying length, each of which forms a thematic unit unto itself. This structure is symbolic to a seven day week that Tithonus has to endure forever, in agony and shows the strife that he has to go through, unlike the finite normality of human life. Alternatively, it could represent magic or unnaturalness because seven is supposedly a magical number and the poem is about unnatural occurrences.

What makes Tithonus’s situation worse is that ‘the gods themselves cannot recall their gifts’. This is an example of dramatic monologue because Tithonus is the speaker and supposedly the audience are the gods. Tennyson creates character in ‘Tithonus’ by creating sympathy for Tithonus from the audience, because he suffers: “strong hours indignant worked their wills, and beat me down and marred and wasted me”. Although the audience feels sympathy towards Tithonus, they must judge him negatively because he made an error. This was his desire “to vary from the kindly race of men”.

Tithonus has an underlying sense of escapism in that Tithonus himself wishes to escape the endless life that he is stuck in: “release me, and restore me to the grave”. Through this quote, Tennyson shows his yearning for permanence and more specifically, the permanence of death. Tennyson also depicts his patriotism to the “race of men” by trying to teach others not to wish to vary from it, as Tithonus did. He shows that any such unnatural variation will result in catastrophe.

Tithonus presents the natural cycle of life followed by death by describing how first “man comes”, then he “tills the fields” and finally “lies beneath”. However, this “cruel immortality” prevents him from following the same pattern.  The rhetorical question “why should man desire in anyway/to vary from the kindly race of man…as is most meet for all?” indicates his realization of the absurdity in asking for immortal life. Tithonus uses imagery as he recalls those days of youth when he “felt my blood/glow with the glow that slowly crimson’d all”, experienced “kisses balmier than half opening buds/Of April”, and Aurora’s ‘rosy shadows bathed” him. At once he wishes to be one of those “happy men with the power to die” . The basic human convention of death has even been taken away from him, he has no control over his fate. He asks Aurora to release him and let him die so that he could forget the emptiness of his days of long life.

Tennyson creates character in Tithonus by creating sympathy for the speaker from the audience but at the same time, displaying Tithonus’s power-hungry side that resulted in his horrific incapacity to die and age forever. Tennyson uses this as a warning to the audience that the “race of man” is sufficient just as it is – this poem displays Tennyson’s patriotism and faith in human kind and that any stray or selfish act could result in disaster.