#13- Much Madness is divinest Sense

This poem is filled with paradoxes. The poem itself is a paradox too, I think, because not only do line lines form paradoxes, but the poem is one as a whole. The two most important paradoxes and the ones that the poem is based off of are "madness is sense" and "sense is madness." These lines are paradoxes because they seem to be contradictory and wrong, but there is a truth in what is being compared. Madness is sense when you object to the ideas of society and sense is madness when you assent to the ideas of the majority. The first one means that while society calls objecting the norm "madness," it is really the sane thing to do because a lot of the time society and the majority are wrong. The second one goes right along with the first as opposite because society calls assenting "sense," while the speaker disagrees and call it mad. I tend to agree with the speaker because a lot of the times society is not driven by faith or morals, but greed and immorality. If you go along with society because it is what everyone is doing, you are assenting to live an largely immoral life. Also, a lot of the ability to think for yourself is lost which does not help the condition at all.