Response to “Ode on Solitude”

Alexander Pope’s “Ode on Solitude” speaks figuratively and literally on the subject about the beauty of being alone. In the literal sense, he describes the peaceful lull one experiences when immersed in solitude, and how that is a fortunate thing to come by. However I believe his whole attitude and opinion towards solitude symbolizes his view on death, and how death is perhaps the best way to truly escape from the chaos of the world and people and everything else.

He divides his stanzas strategically to keep the reader following his thought process fluidly. The first two stanzas describe a hypothetical “man” who is happy, “content to breathe his native air, in his own ground,” and “whose trees in summer yield him shade, in winter fire.” This quiet, peaceful, natural imagery sheds light on both the comfortable sweetness of solitude in one’s home and also points toward being buried and being at peace in the “ground”. However then it shifts to a more general description of those who can find “peace of mind,” and quiet surroundings while the “years slide soft away.” His aesthetic and pondering diction here gives a more universal look at what it means to be at ease and unbothered, in one’s every day life, or after it. Clearly Pope is suggesting a permanent solitude in his descriptions and that this permanence brings forth true peace and freedom –and the reader must have death in mind, being the only real, permanent escape from the world.

         In the last couple stanzas, Pope talks about innocence, which I believe he suggests comes along with peace and aloneness and “meditation,” perhaps a true sense of self. Pope reveals he would rather be left alone in his life, “unseen, and unknown,” and “unlamented,” in his death so he can achieve his goal of a peaceful life and death and anything after. Pope utilizes peaceful imagery, whimsical diction, and an almost sinister tone in order to compare the great achievement of finding solitude in life with finally reaching a permanent solitude.