Adversity and Education

Adversity enables persons with literary talent to write great poems, novels etc. Since it makes them get a greater vision, understanding of human nature and human life. The wearer alone knows where the shoe pinches. More often than not, adversity shoulders their feelings. Their creative power becomes very active. At times their ‘saddest thought’ produces ‘sweetest songs’. Poem like “Break, Break, Break” by Tennyson and “0 Captain! My Captain” by Walt Whitman are effusions of agonized souls. The sadness we notice in the poem ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is really the manifestation of the anguish in Keats’s mind. For him life was not a bed of roses. In fact it was in extreme adversity that Keats wrote some of his greatest poems.

There is no education like adversity. When Lear faces the storm, he realizes the misery of the poor living hovels. Adversity makes clear to us the undesirability of rashness in life. We are reminded of Lear and Hen chard. Adversity also helps us to think of God.

When we are in adversity, we should not get disheartened. Every cloud has a silver lining. We should also work hard with fortitude. Tennyson declared when he lost his most intimate friend, Arthur Hallam, “I must lose myself in action I wither in despair”.