preview

Analysis Of The Going By Thomas Hardy

Decent Essays

“The Going” by Thomas Hardy initially appears as a poem regarding the death of a woman that was close to the speaker. The speaker is evidently distraught throughout the poem as he tries to understand the death of the woman by continually asking the dead questions. When we examine the poem closer, specifically through the language and structure of the poem, it appears as if the speaker is searching for an explanation behind the woman’s death, and perhaps an answer for death as a whole. Ultimately, the poem serves as a way to question death’s significance and also acts as an analysis of the speaker’s relationship with death as he tries to accept the death of a close individual in his life; he eventually comes to the conclusion that there is no answer or explanation to death. The poem begins with the speaker asking an unseen person “why.” He questions “Why did you give no hint that night” (1), leading us to believe that the speaker is resentful about the woman’s death due to him questioning her and suggesting that she was aware that she would pass that night. The vernacular in this line implies the speaker is very clearly surprised by this death and that he is searching for answers because he begins by asking a question, telling the dead she gave “no hint,” and he also mentions that it was “quick.” It is clear that the death was unexpected and rattled the speaker due to him questioning the deceased. However, the speaker is questioning someone who is not present, so the audience can assume he is questioning the deceased. By doing this, the poet seems slightly accusatory because there is no response to his remarks. Each time he asks the question of why, the speaker is left to his own thoughts and has to continue to wonder why for himself; he searches for the truth from the dead which also illustrates their closeness due to the fact he is looking for the truth of the situation from the deceased. Instead, the reader is left with a feeling that the deceased is at blame somehow for their own death. Similarly, the speaker’s use of “you” does not force the speaker to question why they did not notice the deceased’s state of being before they died. We can interpret this questioning as a shift of guilt onto the dead’s

Get Access