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All three poems above broadly describe a need for purpose. Odysseus wants to return to the sea as he finds that sailing and exploring may be his true purpose, The speaker in Invictus fights for their beliefs and stays true to themselves and that gives them purpose in life, The mournful son in Do not Go Gentle into That Good Night wishes to light a new purpose within his father to inspire him to fight and live. This is a broad theme which can pertain many sub sections of things. In Ulysses and Do not Go Gentle into That Good Night, purpose is found later in life. Why is that? Why couldn't it have been sooner? In Invictus is it truly the speakers purpose to fight for themselves?

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Of course the explanations of the themes is represented differently depending on what poem you read. These poems are mainly connected besides showing different types of regret, fulfillment, and search for purpose. Odysseus wishes to travel again, The mournful son of Do not Go Gentle into That Good Night wishes to bring new purpose and life to his father, The speaker in Invictus seems to have found purpose in life already - he is fighting to live without regret and standing up for himself. Usage of literary devices are generally different but a lot of personification and symbolism is used in all three poems

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Purpose, like fulfillment, is a broad idea that does not have an exact way to achieve. In media purpose is represented as maybe a job you do or helping other out - making the world a better place. But why do people strive to find a purpose in life? Why is that almost a goal for everyone in the world? Life is short but living day to day one may find themselves looking back. Realizing they've done nothing with life. Perhaps even regretting - they don't feel fulfilled because they never strove for something. They didn't make a mark on the world. They didn't find a purpose. Human nature is curious and human nature asks "Why are we alive?". We strive to make sense out of things that don't make sense and thus the vision of purpose is created. It gives meaning to a persons life. Everyone has to have been put here for some reason. That is why the pursuit of purpose is so important. Of course you may never even know. It's a human construct after all.

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Modern scientific research on human purpose has its origins in, of all places, a Holocaust survivor's experiences in a series of Nazi concentration camps. While a prisoner at Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and two satellite camps of Dachau, Viennese psychologist Viktor Frankl noticed that fellow prisoners who had a sense of purpose showed greater resilience to the torture, slave labor, and starvation rations to which they were subjected. Writing of his experience later, he found a partial explanation in a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, "Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear almost any 'how.'" Frankl's 1959 book Man's Search for Meaning , a book which proved to be seminal in the field, crystallized his convictions about the crucial role of meaning and purpose. A decade later, Frankl would assist in the development of the first and most widely used standardized survey of purpose, the 21-item "Purpose in Life" test.

As part of its ongoing interest in increasing understanding of character and virtue, the John Templeton Foundation commissioned a review of more than six decades of the literature surrounding the nature of human purpose. Covering more than 120 publications tracing back to Frankl's work, the review examines six core questions relating to the definition, measurement, benefits, and development of purpose.

Psychology of Purpose: What Is Purpose and How Do You Measure It?

In psychological terms, a consensus definition for purpose has emerged in the literature according to which purpose is a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at once personally meaningful and at the same time leads to productive engagement with some aspect of the world beyond the self. Not all goals or personally meaningful experiences contribute to purpose, but in the intersection of goal orientation, personal meaningfulness, and a focus beyond the self, a distinct conception of purpose emerges.

Studies and surveys investigating individual sources of purpose in life cite examples ranging from personal experience (being inspired by a caring teacher) to concerns affairs far removed from our current circumstance (becoming an activist after learning about sweatshop conditions in another country). Most world religions, as well as many secular systems of thought, also offer their adherents well-developed guidelines for developing purpose in life. Love of friends and family, and desire for meaningful work are common sources of purpose.

Over the past few decades, psychologists and sociologists have developed a host of assessments that touch on people's senses of purpose including the Life Regard Index, the Purpose in Life subscale of the Psychological Scales of Well-being, the Meaning in Life questionnaire, the Existence Subscale of the Purpose in Life Test, the Revised Youth Purpose Survey, the Claremont Purpose Scale and the Life Purpose Questionnaire, among others.

The conclusion that emerges from work these tests and surveys, interviews, definitions, and meta-analyses is, roughly, that Frankl's observation was correct - having a purpose in life is associated with a tremendous number of benefits, ranging from a subjective sense of happiness to lower levels of stress hormones. A 2004 study found that highly purposeful older women had lower cholesterol, were less likely to be overweight, and had lower levels of inflammatory response, while another from 2010 found that individuals who reported higher purpose scores were less likely to be diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment and even Alzheimer's Disease. The vast majority of those noted benefits, however, are currently only correlations - in many cases it is not clear whether having a strong sense of purpose in life causes the benefits or whether people experiencing the benefits are simply better positioned to develop a sense of purpose.

Psychology of Purpose: Interventions

Potential interventions to increase purpose and its benefits have focused on the formative years of late youth, where studies have looked at the benefits of supportive mentors and of practices such as gratitude journaling on purpose in life. A 2009 study followed 89 children and adolescents who were assigned to write and deliver gratitude letters to people they felt had blessed them. Participants who had lower initial levels of positive affect and gratitude, compared to a control group, had significantly higher gratitude and positive affect after delivering the letter for as long as two months later.

This result becomes even more promising in light of a series of four studies in 2014 which concluded that even inducing a temporary purpose-mindset improved academic outcomes, including self-regulation, persistence, grade point average, and the amount of time students were willing to spend studying for tests and completing homework.

Psychology of Purpose: The Arc of Purpose

About one in five high school students and one in three college students report having a clear purpose in life. Those rates drop slightly into midlife and more precipitously into later adulthood. Some of these changes make sense in light of the future-oriented nature of purpose. For young people from late childhood onward, a sense of searching for a purpose is associated with a sense of life satisfaction - but only until middle age, when unending purpose-seeking may carry connotations of immaturity. One study, however, explored an interesting exception to the general decline of purpose-seeking: compared to other adults, "9-enders" (individuals ending a decade of life, at ages 29, 39, 49, etc.) tend to focus more on aging and meaning, and consequently, they are more likely to report searching for purpose or experiencing a crisis of meaning.

In mid-life, parenting and other forms of caregiving become a clear source of purpose and meaning for many. Interestingly, studies in 2006 and 1989 showed that, although parents had a stronger sense of meaning in their lives than non-parents, they reported feeling less happy - a reflection of the ways that pursuing one's purpose, especially in highly demanding seasons, can still be difficult, discouraging, and stressful.

A sense of purpose in one's career is correlated with both greater satisfaction at work as well as better work-related outputs. In a 2001 study of service workers, researchers indicated that some hospital cleaning staff considered themselves "mere janitors" while others thought of themselves as part of the overall team that brought healing to patients. These groups of individuals performed the same basic tasks, but they thought very differently about their sense of purpose in the organizations where they worked. Not surprisingly, the workers who viewed their role as having a healing function were more satisfied with their jobs, spent more time with patients, worked more closely with doctors and nurses, and found more meaning in their jobs.

In the later stages of life, common adult sources of purpose like fulfillment in one's career or caregiving for others are less accessible - but maintaining a strong sense of purpose is associated with a host of positive attributes at these ages. Compared to others, older adults with purpose are more likely to be employed, have better health, have a higher level of education, and be married.

Psychology of Purpose Around the Globe

Although the majority of sociological work on purpose in life has focused on people in western, affluent societies, the literature contains a few interesting cross-cultural results that hint at how approaches to and benefits from purpose in life might differ around the world. In Korea, for instance, youth were shown to view purpose as less an individual pursuit and more as a collective matter, while explorations of Chinese concepts of purpose indicates that one's sense of purpose is divided into senses of professional, moral, and social purpose.

Research in the psychology of purpose among people of different socioeconomic backgrounds suggests that those in challenging circumstances are likely to have a difficult time discovering and pursuing personally meaningful aims. This finding fit well with psychologist A.H. Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs, which suggests that people must meet basic needs for things like food, shelter, and safety before they are easily motivated to pursue aims like self-actualization.

However several studies also suggest that purpose can emerge in difficult circumstances and that it may serve as an important form of protection, as in a study that showed that having a sense of life purpose buffered African-American youth from the negative experiences associated with growing up in more challenging environments.

Indeed, as Viktor Frankl argued - based in part on what he had observed first-hand - experiencing adversity might actually contribute to the development of a purpose in life.

STILL CURIOUS?

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The Psychology of Purpose | John Templeton Foundation

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Modern scientific research on human purpose has its origins in, of all places, a Holocaust survivor's experiences in a series of Nazi concentration camps. While a prisoner at Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and two satellite camps of Dachau, Viennese psychologist Viktor Frankl noticed that fellow prisoners who had a sense of purpose showed greater resilience to the torture, slave labor, and starvation rations to which they were subjected.

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Fulfillment is a big thing in human life. I believe fulfillment wards off regret. If you are happy with where you are and what you are doing then you can look back on life with ease. Fulfillment brings happiness, a carefree nature, relaxation. You love what you do, you love those around you, you love your life. The trouble is how do we become fulfilled if we as people are so different? There is no one correct way to become fulfilled so how do we achieve this? Has anyone actually felt fulfilled in life or is it hard to do so as we compare ourselves to others?

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A lack of fulfillment is a huge theme in all three poems above. Odysseus does not feel satisfied with his grandiose lifestyle in his old age as king and wishes to escape back to the waters. In Invictus, the speaker expresses he is fulfilled in his life because he hasn't let his soul be conquered by those who beat him down. In Do not go Gentle into that Good Night, The speaker describes many of men who are unfulfilled by their younger escapades and in their dying moments decide to fight to escape their regrets.

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Now what should we get out of this theme? I believe we should realize we will experience regret a lot. We as people have to learn how to move on from our regret or fight through it in healthy ways. It is a normal feeling and it is okay to experience it. Unfortunately there is no way to go back in time.

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Ulysses and Do not go Gentle into That Good Night both share a theme of deep rooted regret. Odysseus regrets not traveling more and contemplates leaving his kingdom to explore the world again. Similarly, Do not go Gentle into That Good Night describes many men who lived a great younger life but realized their inaction when they became aged. Both poems describe regret during old age due to inaction - Not because of mistakes but because they wish to do more with their lives. In the study next to this post it really explains regret and how this occurs.

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Regret is an important psychological experience that is often misunderstood. The old adage "live life without any regrets" and the corresponding mantra "let it go" suggest, in my opinion, an oversimplified and negatively biased approach to regret. Typically viewed as a sense of loss that arises following a mistake or poor choice, regret is considerably more complex. What follows is a summary of the latest thinking on the psychology of regret. Emerging from this work is the view that regret, under most circumstances, is valuable and should not be pathologized. Regret serves as a source of insight and learning, and supports the development of an increasing sensitivity to the value and worth of opportunities, relationships, and the fragility of life.

The Definition of Regret

Recent theoretical writings on regret center on its counterfactual nature. The term "counterfactual" implies that, in order for regret to emerge, there must be an imagined or idealized outcome that has not occurred. Hence, regret involves the cognitive and emotional recognition that something desirable did not take place, and this negative outcome is perceived to be due to something one has done (or not done). According to Kathryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error and presenter of the compelling TED Talk "Don't Regret Regret," Regret involves two main components, i.e., imagination (i.e., the idea, vision or fantasy of something one would have wanted) and self-agency (i.e., the belief that that idea, vision or fantasy could have been attained if one had acted more advantageously).

Researchers have found that there are essentially two forms of regret:

regret for what one did not do, including missing/not taking advantage of opportunities when they arose (inaction)

regret for what one did, including mistakes, poor choices, missteps, etc. (action)

As it turns out, the amount of time that has lapsed is related to what form of regret is more likely to occur:

For shorter periods of time (e.g., within the last year or so), people are more likely to regret actions they took, including mistakes they made, more so than opportunities that were lost

With the passage of longer periods of time, people tend to regret their inactions more so than their mistakes

Regret is viewed by many experts to be a mental phenomenon conditioned by evolution. That is, it is an evolutionary advantage for a species to learn from pervious mistakes and to remember those mistakes so as to avoid future related mistakes. Past experience lingers as a cautionary tale, paving the way for future better choices and actions likely taken with more forethought, awareness, and wisdom. Interestingly, psychological research indicates that while people often view regret to be distressing, regret nevertheless is rated as a "positive" emotional experience.

The research of Davidai and Gilovich has led to the view that three different "perceptions of self" exist in the psyche: our actual self, our ought self, and our ideal self. Regret is typically based on the degree to which your ideal self (the person you dreamed of becoming - what you believe you COULD BE) diverges from your actual self (the person you are in reality). The ought self (the person you feel you SHOULD BE based on your family history, personal values, religious beliefs, etc.) is responsible for regret that occurs when the actions you have taken conflict with your own moral values. Moreover, since many people develop an ideal self that is greatly exaggerated and unrealistic, self-loathing due to what has not been achieved is not uncommon.

When Is Regret Problematic?

In her TED Talk, Schulz summarizes scientific research indicating that the onset and persistence of regret typically moves through a sequence of phases, which include (1) denial ( just make the bad thing I did or poor decision I made go away); (2) bewilderment (a sense of alienation in which a person cannot believe they participated or caused some situation or outcome to occur, i.e., a sense of being out of one's mind); (3) the desire to punish oneself for a mistake or poor choice; and (4) ruminations (perseverating on what occurred, i.e., thinking about it over and over again often with self-contempt). Regret becomes problematic when chronic cycling between phases 3 and 4 occurs. Moreover, the less opportunity one has to change a negative situation he or she caused, the more likely ruminative cycling will occur, potentially leading to intense sorrow, self-degradation, and anxiety and depression.
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error

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The Psychology of Regret - James Tobin Ph.D.

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Regret is an important psychological experience that is often misunderstood. The old adage "live life without any regrets" and the corresponding mantra "let it go" suggest, in my opinion, an oversimplified and negatively biased approach to regret. Typically viewed as a sense of loss that arises following a mistake or poor choice, regret is considerably more complex.

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A beautiful picture representing Anger and Grief

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A spooky bit of imagery for this poem. A dark gate stands in front of you. What are you getting yourself into?

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This is what I imagine Odysseus to look out to every evening. Of course it would cause some yearning. It's Beautiful!

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I read this article linked with the assignment for this poem and I think a great observation was also the ending stanza. The speaker asks his father to curse AND bless him with his fierce tears meaning he wants to see that he is fighting to stay alive (FIERCE tears are ALIVE) but it also a curse to see his father struggle so. This really helps understand the internal struggling of the speaker.

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Model Text: “To Suffer or Surrender? An Analysis of Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’” – EmpoWord 111

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Death is a part of life that everyone must face at one point or another. The poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” depicts the grief and panic one feels when a loved is approaching the end of their life, while presenting a question; is it right to surrender to death, or should it be resisted?…

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Fulfillment
Don't go down easy
Perseverance
Regret
Readiness
Internal peace

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I described the plot lightly in my reader response. This poem really asks the question: "Should one fight to live or die peacefully?" Which does not have an easy answer. The Speaker compares the lives of many aged and unfulfilled men to his father  to attempt to inspire him to live. These people's old lives are exaggerated to appear to be something great - "a wild man" "a grave man". In his descriptions imagery, personification, and symbolism help push the contrast of living with vigor to dying with no fight. The repetition of the saying "Rage, Rage against the dying of the light" and "do not go gentle into that good night" Clearly show the desperation of our reader to convince his father to live.

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This poem is pretty sad. The speaker is describing people who are aged and close to dying realizing they didn't live their lives to the fullest and decide to keep fighting to live and change their lives. I read this when I wasn't in a good mood so it didn't help much. The speaker urges those who are dying to fight against it - to not go down until they feel they have lived their lives fully. In the end it turns out the speaker is saying this all to his dying dad, clearly trying to get him to fight to live. How depressing....

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Fight for your beliefs
Stay True to yourself
Perseverance
Choice
Rebellion

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The speaker of this poem is reflecting on all the hardships he has experienced through life. He recalls although he was beaten bloody, in despair, and punished his soul remained unconquerable. The poem uses a lot of personification and imagery to make his hardships seem more alive and frightening and thus it makes it much more impressive that he persevered. The poem includes small stanzas which rhyme. I believe keeping it short really drives home that this person is strong. They don't need to describe much more. The rhyming conveys power to me as well.

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This poem was pretty inspirational to me but it was also kind of dark. There is a lot explanation of the bad things this person went through but still fought for what they believed was right. It makes me realize I am not that strong and would probably give up if things got insanely tough. A contradiction I noticed was originally the speaker thanks the gods for his soul in the first stanza but in the last stanza describes himself as the "master of his fate" and "captain of his soul" I am not sure how to interpret this

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Finding Purpose
Identity (Who are you meant to be?)
Aging/The passing of time
Unwavering Spirit

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In this poem, Odysseus/Ulysses is reflecting on his past and he comes to realize a life with no adventure is not one for him. He still wishes to go out and explore even though he has grown old and all of his old shipmates have died. This poem uses many literary devices to push the themes of this poem including, Imagery, Personification, Symbolism, and comparisons.

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I thought this was a pretty good poem! I love the odyssey so this is a good look into how odysseus is doing after the events of the book. It's pretty inspirational how even though he is king he still decides to head out and enjoy what he believes to be his purpose - also in memory of his fallen shipmates.

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i took this poem veryyy literally - Apparently it might be about mental health lol oops

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I enjoy very much how this is laid out, with the explications, then to the comparisons, how they are the same and how they differ. On top of this, you have explained greatly about the concepts you used, such as fulfillment. My question is, out of all three poems you have compared/connected, which is speaks to you the most? - Alayna C.

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Along with Alayna i really enjoyed the connection part of this. With the regret, fulfillment, and psychological purpose. It seems that you take a deeper personal connection with the poems and i think that is what makes your analysis so detailed, which i love. My question is what do you think you could do to make you believe in yourself more, rather than think you wouldn't be tough enough to keep fighting if things got really tough?           

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Along with Alayna i really enjoyed the connection part of this. With the regret, fulfillment, and psychological purpose. It seems that you take a deeper personal connection with the poems and i think that is what makes your analysis so detailed, which i love. My question is what do you think you could do to make you believe in yourself more, rather than think you wouldn't be tough enough to keep fighting if things got really tough?           

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Jordan

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I felt that this was very well thought out, along with a very clean layout. In your analysis of "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," you asked the question of "Should one fight to live or die peacefully." My question is, what would be your answer to this? -Nick

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Like many have said you went into great detail on each poem and brought deeper meaning into each idea. I find it interesting to see your perspective before and after being enlightened into Invictus having more than a literal meaning.
What does it mean to have purpose? It seems this was a big plot into your whole project, so I would like to know what this means to you.

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Of course I'd say good job because I'm biased but truly, I like the organization it's very neat and tidy and I stole the color coding idea from you because it helped. You put in alot of effort and it shows and your opinions and ideas on these are interesting because some differ from mine and it's nice to see how we think similar but different at the same time. All in All good job. Question: Why is there no touch screen? Also If you could go back in time to learn something you know now but wouldve been more useful back then what would it be?
-Evan Hartman

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First of like everyone else I really like your organization and the ways you expressed your own thoughts into each explication. The color coding adds organization and a pop of color which I like. I saw that you said if things got hard you would probably give up, why would this be the case? - Ethan H