39 pages 1 hour read

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Adonais

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1821

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics.

Themes

The Reality of Immortality

Shelley’s elegy upends expectations by refusing to concede to the power and the inevitability of death. The poem emphatically celebrates the reality of immortality, that the flesh, corruptible and vulnerable, is itself an illusion, that the speaker—not Adonais/Keats—is in a far more emotionally compromised position because the speaker still clings to the illusion of reality. The speaker only glimpses the reality of an animated universe where any individual death is a mere occasion to validate that cosmic energy. It is we, the speaker argues, “we [who] decay / Like corpses in a charnel” (Stanza XXXIX, Lines 6-7). In this the poem finds its hope in the very reality that appears only to offer despair: Wait, the poet cautions, until we also shed this ever-decaying body, wait until we touch the illuminating animation of immortality through death.

Death, then, is overcome: “Peace, peace! He is not dead, he doth not sleep / He hath awaken’d from the dream of life” (Stanza XXXIX, Lines 1-2). The poem centers on the death of a young, promising poet taken too soon. Death would appear to be the antagonist. As the poem opens, the reader is admonished multiple times that Adonais/Keats is dead.

Related Titles

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

A Defence of Poetry

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Defence of Poetry

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

Mont Blanc

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

Mutability

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mutability

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Plot Summary

logo

Prometheus Unbound

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Prometheus Unbound

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

Queen Mab

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

The Masque of Anarchy

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Masque of Anarchy

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

The Triumph of Life

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Triumph of Life

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

To a Skylark

Percy Bysshe Shelley

To a Skylark

Percy Bysshe Shelley