be good (formal), may in fact be bad (casual). Also, the narrators values decline as he gains knowledge, going from good to evil to indifference. Finally, the great irony is that the narrator does not learn from his mistakes. His method of escapism made him unhappy and resentful, so he abandoned it for another, more destructive form of escape: booze.What the narrator fails to realize here and throughout the poem is that it is not a specific method of escapism that causes unhappiness less fulfillment, but the practice of escapism itself. In practice, ignoring true reality will only make real life seem like "a load of crap."...
