The Problem in Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare

Layla Mustapha

ID – 308536978

British literature

Natanela Elias

25.1.2015

The Problem in Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare The speaker discusses the idea of mortality and immortality by comparing between nature and his beloved and says that the latter is better than nature. This beloved is immortal while nature seasons like summer have a short span of time. However, the problem is that the speaker compares something which is according to him immortal with something mortal. How can his beloved who is flesh and blood become eternal? Anyway, the speaker says that he can equate his beloved to immortality when he writes about her, because when he does so, he immortalizes her and only then she becomes immortal. Then, the speaker can compare his beloved to nature as he ensures the continuity of his works after his death, and when people read his works they will revive his beloved. The speaker begins his poem by asking a rhetorical question whether he should compare his beloved to a summer day. Then he says that his beloved is more lovely and more tempered. According to what have said before, the speaker gives several reasons why summer is less beautiful than his beloved. Summer winds shake the buds that emerged in spring, it ends too quickly, and the sun can get too hot or can be obscured by clouds. Here we can see that summer have unpleasant things that make it imperfect. The way that he describes the short summer seems like summer has a lease on the weather just like a person who might have a lease on car; summer can enter into and must abide by, agreement. The point here is that summer is fated to end. However, if we think about it, isn't summer also fated to begin every year, it happens in an infinite number of times, then isn't it in a meaningful sense immortal. In lines "And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd;" the speaker expands his claim, declaring that everything beautiful must eventually fade away and lose its charm by the natural flow of time. The word untrimm'd may have two meanings; things that are beautiful eventually lose their trimmings and thus fade from beauty or the way we trim or adjust the sails to take advantage of the wind. Here we can see two opposed pictures that reflect how through time humans beauty starts to fade, and since the beloved is human it means that she is going to lose her beauty through time. Nevertheless, in the other hand the sentence might mean another thing that his beloved beauty will not change and she will stay beautiful and young while time passes which gives her the characteristics of immortality but how can this happen while she is human. Humans are mortals and their beauty fades with time. On lines 9-10, the speaker moves from bashing summer and the limitation inherent in nature, and he pronounces that his beloved is not subject to the rules. He argues that his beloved is unlike the real summer and she will never go away and will never lose her beauty. The summer in real life actually is an eternal summer since it comes back every year for all eternity. Here we can notice that the beloved and the summer's day are quite similar. To sum up, according to the cycle of nature, everything that is fair and beautiful now will change and die. The beloved is much better than the nature, her summer will last forever, she will never die, and even when she grows old and changes, still her entity will never die. As long as humanity exists and poem that he wrote for her is read, so every time she will live. Through his poetry, she will be eternal. If we think about it this poem have been written to be read by the audience, and that audience, by continuing to read the poem, they will give the beloved the feature immortality.