Eve Of St. Anges Essays (1681 words) - Madeline,

Eve Of St. Anges Someone once said that true love is only an illusion and can never be achieved. This is evidently shown through many elements of the poem by John Keats, ?The Eve of St. Agnes.? Much of this poem is about the imagination and how it can blind people and make them oblivious to the true events that are occurring. We the readers can see this very easily through the portrayal of one of the main characters Madeline. The second main character Porphyro tries to authenticate her quest for a dream experience however ends up taking advantage of her while she thinks she is still dreaming. The poem does endorse how the power of Madeline's visionary imagination can influence her and the others around her, but also that happenings outside of the dream can cause the person in the dream to be taken advantage of with out the dreamers knowledge. The truth is that Porphyro knows exactly what he is doing and instead of doing things in a honorable way, he decides to proceed in a dishonorable way and totall y violates her visionary imagination. The night that is being spoken of in this poem is a night of dreams and imagination. It is supposed to be a mystical night in which young women have dreams of their one true love. Madeline takes this to a totally different level in that she totally succumbs to the mystical ability of the night and totally loses her mind. In that she doesn't even know if she is still dreaming or if she is wake. Some interpretations of the poem say that she is wake and know what she is doing. However, I believe the contrary that she doesn't know what she is doing. ?Hoodwink'd with faery fancy.? (70) Most of what she does is due to the mystical feeling the night causes. A mind can play may tricks and the mind can make it so that it has no concept of time or whether it is wake or still dreaming. One of the few times in the book that she sort of knows that she is wake is when Porphyro enter her room and tries to wake her as gently as possible in that she never truly wakes up and remains in a dream like st ate. He awakes her very softly, ?He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute, /In Provence call'd ?La belle dame sans mercy.'?(291-292) I find this to be quite odd because this poem is about hoodwinking. Why would he do this to wake her sleeping? If you are hoodwinking someone you are trying to dupe, trick or fool them and the only way that Porphyro can do this is to keep her in a dream like state. This very softly and sweetly awakens her and now ?Her eyes were open, but she still beheld, now wide awake, the vision of her sleep?(298-299) This tells me that she is now awake but in her subconscious she is still dreaming. She has no clue as to what she is doing at this point in time. She truly believes that she is still asleep and she is just dreaming. After he has done the deed and she is still sleeping he awakes her and she tries to him about here dream. Upon hearing this Porphyro says, ?This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline? (326) in an attempt to wake her up so she know what she is doing. I think that he tries to do this so that he doesn't look like the bad guy, in that, the only way that he can get a beautiful bride is by hoodwinking her. Upon hearing this Madeline is very distraught by this and she proceeds to say ?No Dream, alas! Alas! and woe is mine! / Porphyro will leave me here and fade to pine. ---?(328-329) All this has happened after he has already violated her dreams and has done things that young gentlemen at that time were not supposed to do. As Jack Stillinger said ?We must leave or world behind, where stratagems like Porphyro's are frowned on, sometimes in criminal courts, and enter an world where ?in sooth such things have been'