Byron's "The Prisoner of Chillon"[1], a dramatic monologue narrated by a prisoner, François de Bonnivard, was written immediately after the poet's famous sailing expedition on the Lake Geneva with Percy Shelley. Visiting the thirteenth-century Chillon Castle, Byron must have heard of and felt a great interest in the pathetic story of the Genevan patriot. He celebrates the "eternal spirit of the unchained mind" in his preface "Sonnet on Chillon" [2], from which we see that the poet regards Chillon as the symbol of political liberalism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Unlike the "Sonnet on Chillon", which was added later to the poem, "The Prisoner of Chillon" does not deal with specific historical facts about Bonnivard as critics such as William H. Marshall, Robert F. Gleckner, Jerome rightly point out J. McGann and Newey Vincent [3]. In the narrative verse, Byron mainly presents the psychological condition of an individual mind in confinement. In the first three stanzas, a detailed account of his incarceration is given. Due to the "anger of persecution" (20), the prisoner and his brothers are imprisoned. But in the same stanzas we are also told that they are "chained in their hands, but grieved in their hearts" (55). That is to say, life in a prison itself is not a painful experience for the speaker. Rather, it is the death of his brothers that strikes a blow to his mind. Suppressed by loss - not by confinement - he turns into a "wreck" (26). Then loneliness and desperation are depicted in the following stanzas, where the speaker recounts the gradual decline and death of his two brothers. Here, for example, are some lines from the ninth stanza: I had no thoughts, no feelings - none - Among the stones I stood a stone, and I was, scarcely aware of what I knew, like cliffs without shrubs in the mist;... ( 253-8 )The speaker, whose "faith" (229) forbids "a selfish death" (230), is now a living dead. The isolation brought about by the death of his relatives completely overwhelms him and drives him into “A sea of ​​stagnant idleness, / Blind, boundless, dumb and still” (249-50). However, the prisoner is resilient enough to come to terms with his confinement. The tenth stanza tells of being visited by "a lovely bird, with blue wings" (268) and that he expects the bird to give him some sort of consolation: And had come to love me when None lived to love me so again, And the cheering from the edge of my prison had brought me back to feeling and thinking. (275-8)What he seeks here is a Wordsworthian relationship between his mind and the natural world: he seeks to relive himself with the help of the bird, a thing of nature. Against his will, however, the bird finally flies away, without giving him consolation. He is forced to remember that "he was mortal" (290). The speaker is, in this way, pushed back into the dark reality of his own destiny. He is again "Lone - like the corpse within his shroud, / Lone - like a lonely cloud" (293-4). In his essay on Byron's view of nature, Edward E. Bostetter argues that "Byron's reaction to his [outside] world is ambiguous, often contradictory... [4] This also applies to "The Prisoner of Chillon", that is, the poet repeatedly lets his hero explore the interaction between humans and nature, but the exploration does not work. Even if a bird, as we have seen, cannot be a refreshment for him, the prisoner does not give up find comfort in nature. When he is free from chains and allowed to move around the prison, the prisoner looks out the window to be able to establish a new relationship with the surrounding world. The mountains, the snow, the Rhone, a small island: all of them "(365), 1986) 129-31.