Keats Escapism

John Keats by all counts had a life riddled with sadness. Keats struggled with money for most of life. Despite being in good health, Keats was overwhelmed by the feeling that he too was destined for an early death. He ended up being right and died at age 25. There was a period of time where Keats was crushed by critics and he was described by Percy Shelley as "a pale flower" in Adonis. Keats is renowned for being an escapist poet, meaning he uses his poetry to escape from his bitter reality into an imaginative world, but he is forever cognizant of the fact that the reality that plagues him is unavoidable and not fully worth avoiding. Keats is tormented by the disconnection between the ideal and actual, never truly being able to achieve happiness.
Keats' "Ode to Nightingale" is a perfect example of his escapism. In the third stanza the speaker is describing to the nightingale the bitter world that it does not know of. Keats' view of life is one full of misery, pain, struggle and death.
So John Keats is an escapist because he seeks escape from reality. However, he is never truly able to escape. No matter how deep he buries himself in poetry or art, it gives only momentary respite before he is shot back to reality and reminded of limitations of being lost in a stationary scene. He is an escapist that never truly escapes, tied down to the very thing he tries to escape from. 

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