The Status of 'Tithonus' as a Dramatic Monologue Anonymous 12th Grade

Tithonus, written by Lord Tennyson in 1833, is a poem about a Trojan prince who is granted immortality. Tennyson wrote this poem as a dramatic monologue so that any criticism of his Romantic style would be directed to the characters themselves. Tithonus, the sole speaker, asks the god Aurora for immortality. However, he neglects to also ask for everlasting youth, which results in greater pain than a normal life would have yielded. This results in his eternal aging and the inability to perish, a combination that Tithonus describes as “cruel immortality” (5). Tennyson uses dramatic monologue to explore the ambivalent response to Tithonus’s predicament and his character development as the poem progresses; furthermore, he follows his typical tenets of world weariness and escapism when describing Tithonus’s plight of perpetual torment.

The poem begins by describing the normal man as one who “comes and tills the field and lies beneath” (3). Tithonus’s decision to forgo the ordinary life for an eternal one has led him to “wither slowly in [Aurora’s] arms” (6). His life fades like a “gray shadow” (11), although he was once “glorious in his beauty” (12). He had asked the goddess Aurora for immortality, which she granted without thought,...