Question

Each of us lives partly in a world of make-believe, much of it inherited from our families and our cultures. What happens when it is challenged or we choose to discard it? Reflect on this question in light of Tennyson’s poem “The Lady of Shalott.” Your answer should be at least 250 words.

Answer 1

There is a Lady of Shalott in most of us.From the moment we start understanding our parents we believe they will always protect us , be there for us, be our heroes in moments of pain.In most families the parents provide the children with food, clothes , a place to live comfortably and also give love and affection.

The thing is that we grow up and see the world with our own eyes, not with the eyes of our mum and dad.We simply begin to question their life lessons and want to live our own experiences without the halo of this past protection we were so sure of.

Remembering nothing that we were taught we try to face the world with our conceptions, our rebelions and our creations.Out of defiance againt the adult and may be the old world, we search for something new and in most cases we get hurt.Becoming adults, we find someone to love and raise our own families. That is the moment we truly understand our parents.

In the poem The Lady of Shalott leads a solitary life, unchallenged, weaving her magic web.The moment she stops , she gazes down at the real existing world , she is doomed.

The make believe world our parents , culture or traditions provide is meant to act as a shield , yes, but also to give us someone or something to turn to when we are in moments of pain.That way we have an opportunity not to end up as The lady of Shalott.

Answer 2

There are several factors that can influence how we see life (and how we choose to live it): our family, our background, our culture, our education, our problems, our relationships and our personal choices – just to name a few! Some people will end up creating a very realistic approach to life due to those circumstances, but some people just won’t. Instead, they live in a fairy-tale world that they have created for themselves, mostly to escape reality and to be able to go on despite the obstacles and challenges they may face.

Once we choose to challenge or even discard this make-believe world, a brand new world becomes available to us. We have to accept the fact that things will never be the same again and that we are responsible for our words, actions and its consequences. We must understand that this might seem too difficult or even impossible to achieve at times, but the pain and the struggle are necessary in that process. And being part of this process may bring us positive changes and good surprises, as long as we are willing to embrace the risk in order to find out what those changes can bring to us.

The poem “The Lady of Shallot” is a good example of what I just explained. In that poem, a young lady has to work all day long on a charmed web, having no time for any other activity. All she can see from the outside world is a small image that her mirror shows her – that’s when she sees other people from that village living their lives and doing their daily activities. She has no interaction with them, since she is locked and isolated in a tower. Besides, she has been told not to look at the village directly, or else something really bad would happen to her. Basically she was told not to do something, she was convinced that she should follow certain rules and she just decided to obey, isolating herself from others and living a miserable life with a boring routine.

That shows us that we can either believe and follow whatever people tell us to do (and we will never know if that was the right choice since we don’t know what would have happened if we chose not to obey instead) OR we can question what others tells us to do, take the risk and see what happens. It might be something bad, but it could also be something much better than we expected.