John Clare “I am” Essay Example

to the reader and makes it feel more personal. He is a tortured soul and the poet accentuates this by making the reading feel like all is lost for him, he has no hope, no future, no expectations. "My friends forsake me like a memory lost" As the reader, you feel sorry for him, an overwhelming sense of pity and compassion.

He's lamenting his woes and we are empathetic towards his anguish. "I am the self-consumer of my woes" What increases our unease to his affliction, is that he wishes to escape his torturous confines, to break free of his physical and mental woes, and "sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept". To his dismay, he is chained to this world, to live out his silent pain and agony. "Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys" However, "I am" is not just the rantings of a delusional madman, nor a demonically possessed fool.

It has all the trademarks of a romantic poet, the extreme assertion of one's self-being. It's his problems he is lamenting about, he wants others to know of his woes and troubles, but no one can help him. The poet itself has rhythm and is precise, it has feeling and a beat to it. No madman could have written this, or is it the rant of a misunderstood genius? The poem fits together, the stanzas are purposeful in their layout, each word is positioned to be enunciated correctly in which it fits with the next line.

John Clare may have been psychologically unfit to participate with society, but within that madness of his brain, was a

genius ticking away. Perhaps sub-consciously as he wrote the poem, he positioned the words as such, but alas, we shall never know. The last stanza is about lost innocence, a connection to lost/remembered childhood, a key theme of the Romantic period. It is also a redemption prayer for past wrongs, and a cry out for peace beyond our understanding. And yet, it is all this and so much more.

In the final line, John Clare shows his final connection to inner peace and nature."The grass below - above the vaulted sky" The enclosing walls of the asylum are nowhere to be seen, only open space and where John Clare wishes truly in his heart to find the peace and serenity he is so deeply missing. I believe that people can connect to this poem, as it deals with the issue of depression. It is a widely known problem with many people and what John Clare describes is exactly the kind of pain someone who is depressed could experience. He is dealing with things people can relate to, nothing out of the ordinary or far-fetched.

His words are one of mad suffering and we have all been through something like that (even if it is small) at least once in our lives when the world seems like it has turned its back on you, and there is nothing left in your life but sorrow and pain.