Interesting Interpretation of “The lotos Eaters”

 

The poem talks about idle happiness. But the question is whether the author is supporting it or allowing it, or he keeps it neutral as debatable.

One can logically comment that the purpose of the poem is to criticize a life of do-nothing leisure. Tennyson himself and his father were both hard workers. When Tennyson wrote the poem, many of the upper class people in England and the rest of Europe lived a life of leisure and they used their inherited lands to earn money and expend these money for fashions , parties etc.

Although Tennyson himself belonged to a noble family but his father had been disinherited.As a result, he(Tennyson's father) had to manage money to maintain his large family because Alfred was one of twelve Tennyson children. While Alfred was joining Cambridge University, his father died and that's why he had to return to help out. It was not the time of his fame as a poet. He had to work hard for his family.

After reading his background, It's natural to seem that Tennyson would annoy on an unproductive life of leisure. He may also have anger on the use of drugs and alcohol as means to escape reality because his father started to drink heavily when Alfred was a teenager.

On the other hand, one can comment that Tennyson was approving a leisurely life as a way of working which indicates the profession of England's lower and middle classes. In the industrial age of the early nineteenth century, many workers were spending long hours in factories, shops and offices. Life was so fast. Industrial city like London were crowed and smoky. Everyone seemed busy to put a coin in his pocket. Life was just as busy at sea. Ships were sailing to the Americans, the East indies, and elsewhere to expand commerce and build the empire.

Ulysses' crewmen speak of melancholy and even death as their friend because of their distaste to a life of toil, tension, and sea travel and Perhaps Tennyson's dissatisfaction with the direction of the British Empire.

It is also possible that Tennyson was trying to keep balance and that is "Too much leisure is bad, and too much work is equally bad"