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The Lotos Fruit

The central symbol in “The Lotos-Eaters” is the mysterious lotos fruit that causes the mariners to grow lethargic and lose the motivation to complete their homeward journey. Given the importance of this fruit in the poem, it’s surprising that the initial speaker doesn’t describe it in much detail. Whereas the speaker goes on at length about nearly every aspect of the island’s topography, the speaker says little about the lotos fruit itself. In the Homeric source material on which the poem is based, the lotos is described as “a flowering food” with a “honey-sweet taste.” Here, however, Tennyson refrains from commenting on the flavor, opting only to emphasize the fruit’s strange effects (lines 28–34):

Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them,
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave

Here, the speaker describes how the fruit transforms the mariners’ sense of perception. For one thing, the sea suddenly appears to them as something violent and alienating. For another, those who eat the lotos feel like their companions are speaking to them across the divide between life and death. This description of the mariners’ altered perception may suggest that the lotos is an opium-like drug that produces drowsy hallucinations. But even as the lotos has a sleep-inducing quality, it’s also a catalyst for the awakening of the mariners’ sensual pleasure. In forcing them to rest from their toils, the lotos also enables them to experience the sweetness life has to offer. In this way, the lotos symbolizes the pleasure of leisure.

The Sea

Whereas the lotos fruit symbolizes the pleasure of rest, the sea symbolizes the toil of labor. In the context of the larger story from which Tennyson drew this story of the lotos-eaters, the Greek hero Odysseus and his mariners are sailing home to Ithaca after 10 years of war in Troy. However, due to the interference of Poseidon, the sea god whom Odysseus has offended, the journey has been full of frustration and misdirection. In this context, the sea is a symbolic space of physical and mental struggle. The mariners have therefore stopped on this unnamed island to get a break from the toilsome sea. However, once the mariners eat the lotos fruit and begin to contemplate abandoning their journey home, the sea takes on a different symbolic function. No longer the source of great struggle, the sea becomes the subject of leisured contemplation (lines 105–107):

Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray

As the constant churning of the sea continues without ceasing, the mariners derive yet deeper pleasure from the idea of remaining on shore. Hence, they conclude their Choric Song by declaring their preference for “the shore” over “labour in the deep mid-ocean” (lines 171 and 172).

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