Canto 2

Don Juan is an epic poem written by Lord Byron which most likely seen as a mock epic in which Byron criticizes the other deep thinking poets of his time. Byron’s mock of nature as the sublime is one of the big themes in the poem. In Don Juan’s Canto 2, stanzas 104-108 Byron uses word choice, rhymes, and imagery to portray nature as relentless and dangerous in contrast to Wordsworth who mostly describes nature and its positive attributes.

Byron’s use of words portraying danger, hopelessness, and fatality help to depict the ocean and nature as relentless. In lines 104-108 words such as wild, senseless, reluctant, danger, and clung are frequently used to describe the ocean and Don Juan’s experience with nature. For example, in line 104, the shore is described as, “wild, without a trace of man/ and girt by formidable waves.” Then once again in line 108 the sea he states,” There, breathless, with his digging nails he clung/ fast to the sand, lest the returning wave/ from whose reluctant roar his life he wrung/ should suck him back to her insatiate grave.” In addition these stanzas contain a lot of action verbs such as swimming, wading, scrambling, rolled, and digging. These action verbs allow the reader to feel the desperation and the need for Don Juan to survive.

Byron also utilizes imagery as a way to show how much force nature actually has. The way he describes the situation Don Juan is in makes the reader picture the ocean and the beach as life-threatening entities. In stanza 106, when describing swimming towards shore you can feel the desperation when Don Juan is described as swimming with “his boyish limbs” or when he described “the greatest danger here was from a shark.” In stanza 105 he also describes the river he learned to swim in as a “sweet river.” By making this contrast between what most of society knows as “nature” and what nature is actually like out at sea Byron is once again portraying nature as the sublime and a great and dangerous force. While describing these situations Byron is able to paint a picture for the reader so that the reader can feel what is going on in the poem.

Through the use of word choice, imagery and rhymes Byron successfully portrays nature to the extreme as a relentless force of evil. By portraying nature as such a dangerous, scary force Byron seems in some form to be mocking poets such as Wordsworth. Byron contrasts Wordsworth’s view of nature by depicting it as dangerous, negative, and something that should not be messed around with. It seems as though nature is a major character in the poem and is used in some ways as the major antagonist. It is what sets him back on his trip, and what almost takes his life. This is far off from how Wordsworth describes nature in The Prelude as a place where he develops his deepest thoughts and great mind. Nature is not nurturing in Don Juan but rather an evil.