Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Crossing the Bar into YA Dystopia

          When I saw Tennyson's Crossing the Bar (1889) on my reading schedule this week I got super excited.  I've had experience with this poem--very recent experience as it turns out--and I was eager to learn more about it.

          Crossing the Bar is a poem of peaceful and calm acceptance by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, thought to be written as his own elegy.  The extended metaphor in the poem of "crossing the bar" represents traveling serenely and securely from life through death. (wikipedia)  It is enjoyed by many readers for its picture of peaceful tranquility, and for these reasons it has been used by many at funerals and memorial services. (allpoetry.com)  The tranquility of the work is what contrasts so dynamically with the themes of the contemporary Young Adult novel series Matched by Ally Condie which incorporates and references the poem again and again.

          Tennyson wrote Crossing the Bar after suffering a serious illness at sea.  According to Robert W. Hill, Jr., editor of Tennyson's poetry; authoritative texts, juvenilia and early responses, criticism, Tennyson said the words of the poem "came in a moment", and before his death he instructed his son to include Crossing the Bar as the end of all editions of his poetry.  In Ally Condie's Matched series, a set of three young adult dystopian fantasy novels, the poem stands in stark contrast to life as it is dictated by the Society.

          (For an overview of dystopian fiction, please see Through the Wormhole: Confessions of a Bookworm: It's the End of the World As We Know It...And Why ...)

          Like all dystopian fiction, the world of Matched is governed by a society with very rigid rules.  Think Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, The Giver--each of these is a classic dystopian tale.  In Condie's novels, Officials of the Society decide who you love, where you work and when you die.  In exchange, Citizens are given a long life, the perfect job and the ideal mate. (matched-book.com)  People are happy in this regime.  They are healthy, free from disease and turmoil and die exactly at age 80, surrounded by loved ones at a Final Banquet.  This new, efficient way of living, which seems like Utopia to some, is turned on its head in part when main character Cassia finds two poems hidden in an artifact.  The Society has culled all of culture into a manageable number:  One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Paintings, One Hundred Songs; and Cassia's "new" poems are considered dangerous.  One of these is Tennyson's Crossing the Bar.

        For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

  The flood may bear me far,

    I hope to see my Pilot face to face

   When I have crost the bar.

 

 

          The poem reflects a placid and accepting attitude.  The narrator (and Tennyson) was accepting of his death.  He hopes the ocean will be calm, that there will be no sadness at his farewell, that he will look upon the face of his Pilot (God).  In Condie's novels, her teenage characters rage against the Society that dictates their entire lives right down to the very moment of their death.  They desire knowledge and experience that those who rule over them deny them.  To this end they teach one another secreted poems like Crossing the Bar.  In the second installment of the series, Crossed, the last stanza of the poem is recited over the graves of fallen soldiers who revolt against the Society for the freedom to choice:  choice in who they love and the choice to not go gently toward a predetermined death.  (Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night is another poem referenced in Condie's books.)

 

          It's intriguing to see how many contemporary American authors, especially those who write juvenile and young adult fantasy, incorporate classic works from English literature into their stories.  While they give the contemporary works more depth, they also serve to breathe new life and interest into the classic works they incorporate.  I'll be on the look out for another such literary reference the next time I pick up a new YA title.

 

References:

 

Wikipedia, Crossing the Bar, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Bar

 

Hill, Robert W., Jr., ed (1971) Tennyson's poetry; authoritative texts, juvenilia and early responses, criticism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company

 

AllPoetry.com, Crossing the Bar by Alfred Lord Tennyson, http://allpoetry.com/poem/8473301-Crossing_the_Bar-by-Alfred_Lord_Tennyson

 

Condie, Ally, Matched (2010), Speak-Penguin Group

 

Condie, Ally, Crossed (2011), Speak-Penguin Group