Issue of Old Age in the Poem “Growing Old” by Matthew Arnold

The issue of aging is discoursed in many literary genres by many writers and poets, including Matthew Arnold, who depicts old age with a quite pessimistic tone and perspective in his poem "Growing Old." Old people are seen and regarded by society, especially by the young, as respectable and wise people. For many people, however, getting old is not seen as a very pleasant course of human life and is not wanted because of the deformations occurring in the body and mind, which have been tried to be solved for centuries. Even though physical deformities are a part of the reason why people do not want to age, the real factor that makes them scared is losing their mental abilities. Because what makes a human who they are is in their brain, any damage to the brain, natural or not, means that you lose a part of your personality and identity. Based on this, Arnold depicts the matter of getting old as a process that causes one to lose their soul and identity along with their physical function and beauty through figures of speech, the persona’s tone, and images in "Growing Old". The persona in the poem starts with a question: "What is it to grow old?" In the first ten lines, he gives an answer to this question by referring to the bodily effects of getting old, but he also states that it is not what aging completely is; that there is more to it. While explaining further, the pessimistic nature in the first half of the answer indicates loss of power, in the line "Is it to feel our strength—/Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay?", and loss of beauty, with a personification in the line "Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?", increases later to create a feeling of melancholy for the reader. This sense of melancholy is developed with the use of images and figures of speech throughout the poem. The most distinct elements that are used are the repetition of some words and rhetorical questions that are not meant for the reader to answer. While the repetitive questions force the reader to think about the persona’s point and make them curious about what is to come after these questions and their answers, the litany of the words "it is", "is it" and "‘tis not" provides a sense of being lectured; that is, the persona prompts the reader to think that they are going to learn something they did not know and it will be taught by someone confident about what he is to say and what he knows. These serve as a basis for making what is meant to be said in the poem believable for the reader. 

The persona explains his point by starting by showing the reader what aging is not. "Ah, ’tis not," he says, "what in youth we dreamed ’would be!" In the next line, by using a visual image with the help of simile and the audial help of euphony, he expands his idea with an example and states that old age is not something soft and peaceful as it is stated with many soft sentences and examples like this in the lines "’ Tis not to have our life/Mellowed and softened as with sunset glow". With these lines and the lines that come after them, the persona finally starts to answer his first question. He shows that it is not being a wise person and seeing all the truth and remembering the good old days one had, but the opposite. It is the loss of memory and the sense of being young and having lived, as well as being trapped in time and body, that causes decay. What is being emphasized here, in these lines, is that one does not enhance their personality and knowledge by getting old; they start to lose what they had; their youth, memories, joy... The loss of these elements, which create one’s identity and are parts of their soul, is a reason for misery on the way to death. Because old age means you lose everything that makes you who you are before the definite end, which is going to destroy them anyway. Thus, to give that sense of melancholy deeply, euphemism is used in the lines "When we are frozen up within, and quite/The phantom of ourselves," to soften a harsh truth like death and make that feeling interpenetrate the reader rather than strike and shock them. Finally, the poem ends with the lines "To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost/Which blamed the living man." which indicates the identity one gained in their youth, which is given "the hollow ghost" as a metaphor to highlight its disappearance, is upset with the body, which cannot resist the natural process of aging.

 To sum up, Matthew Arnold depicts that one does not gain wisdom and the sweet joy of a fulfilled life in the passing years and natural process of their life, but one loses their spirit and identity as much as their physical power and beauty through his persona’s melancholic tone, figures of speech that are used to emphasize some points, and images that make the reader feel what is indicated deeply in his poem "Growing Old."