Escape for Keats

There can be no question that life presents many disagreeable scenarios. Be it the loss of a friend, a failure to succeed, a dishonor upon the family, the need to escape from despair into bliss can be achieved by a wide variety of choices and decisions. In his famous and remarkable work "Ode to a Nightingale", John Keats offers such forms of fleeing from anguish into pleasure for a narrator dissatisfied with his lot in life.

Written to a singing bird in the trees, Keats's poem explores a variety of methods for a man to escape from a life with which he is discontented. Beginning his poem with "My heart aches" (Line 1), Keats presents his narrator as unhappy from the commencement. Wishing to simply forget his life and be one with the carefree bird who sings his immortal song, the narrator explores various ways in which he might succeed in leaving his troubled mind behind throughout the work.

The first scenario that the narrator explores is escape through imbibing alcohol. He longs for a "draught of vintage!" (Line 11) so "That [he] might drink and leave the world unseen,/And with thee fade away into the forest dim" (Lines 19-20). Dissatisfied with this choice and remaining jealous of the bird who "hast never known/The weariness, the fever, and the fret" (Lines 22-23) that he has, the narrator instead turns to the beauty and timelessness of poetry. He hails its "viewless wings" (32), but his sight continues to fail him as the night grows on and still his mind is filled with despair.

The most powerful form of escape for this narrator lies in flight forever from this world through death. The narrator proclaims that "for many a time/[He] has been half in love with easeful Death" (Lines 52-52) and that "Now more than ever seems it rich to die" (Line 55). It seems that for this man, only through death will his soul be able to discover peace, away from the pain and suffering that torments his days. He even exalts dying as taking him away with "no pain" (Line 56).

Interestingly enough, the narrator, though he hails these forms of escape while remaining envious of the bird who is able to eschew suffering, never takes action with any of them. He fashions his escape through intoxication, death, poetry and dreaming, but never does he drink, commit suicide or escape his reality. His thoughts stray to these forms, but he takes no concrete action other than escape through his imagination.

Keats explores psychology as well as the beauty and tenacity of language in this poem. This is a remarkably human story that finds its purpose in that escape from this world is only too hard to achieve and the forlorn fancies of pursuing contentment are nearly impossible to come by.