Literary Analysis Of Thomas Hardy's 'The Darkling Thrrush'

The fact that enjambment is used throughout the poem such as in the lines, “like a colour slide or press an ear against its hive” portrays a lack of structure and therefore emphasizes the initial enjoyment one feels when reading a poem before the chore of analyzing it begins. This is also emphasized through the fact that the poem is a free verse poem.

Throughout the poem it is easy to tell that the flow of this poem is non-traditional, for example, Hardy expresses hesitation in lines one and two of the third stanza. The form of the poem is five quatrains written in iambic trimeter with an end rhyme scheme of: (a,b,a,b,c,d,c,d,e,f,) “met”—a, “inn”—b, “wet”—a, “nipperkin!”—b, “infantry”—c, “face”—d, “me”—c, “place”—d, “because”—e, “foe”—f.

‘The Darkness Out There’ and ‘The Withered Arm’ are both short stories. The characterization techniques they use are contrasting and similar. Each story is from a different time; ‘The Withered Arm’ being 19th century and ‘The Darkness Out There’ being 20th century. Thomas Hardy writes ‘The Withered Arm’ as a 3rd person narrative whereas Penelope Lively uses a mixture between 3rd and 1st person.

The poet in her writing used the language tools of symbolism, images, metaphor and nature to illustrate her poetic ideas. This poem ‘’The Woman thing’’ seeks to view the men as unemployed in search for survival of livelihood thereby getting involved in various kind of hands on work. The poet called these men ‘’Hunters’’ which is a language tool of imagery. Poet used the language of imagery to communicate her words to her readers by saying in line 4 of the poem ‘’The hunters are back from beating the winter’s face in search of a challenge or task in search of food making fresh tracks for their children’s hunger. The hunters are treading heavily homeward through snow that is marked with their own bloody footprints, empty handed, the hunters return snow-maddened, sustained by their rages.

Although this poem also is connected with nature, the theme is more universal in that it could be related to Armageddon, or the end of the world. Even though this theme may seem simple, it is really complex because we do not know how Frost could possibly

Poems are typically written in a distinctive way to convey a specific message to the reader. The words or diction construct a poem by depicting ideas, feelings, setting, and characters. Therefore, a poet must chose his/her words with great care to create the appropriate message and to allow the reader to comprehend the general meaning. Thomas Hardy composed The Man He Killed, a poem demonstrating the effect war has upon soldiers and how war changes friend into a foe. The informal diction used by Hardy adds to the general meaning and impact of the poem. Idiom, specific and concrete words, and rhyming are all combined to form the diction of the poem, which enhance the

“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.

This poem is approached with a narrative style and reads like a story from the point of view of the poet which starts off with the phrase ‘Once in the winter’ indicating the retelling of a story. The author uses a lot of descriptive words to fully absorb the reader and to give a vivid depiction of the story. For example, in the phrases, ‘crouched in the last hours’ and ‘frozen and hungry’, we see the distressing emotions that are being experienced by the woman and we get a sense of the urgency and fatality that is quickly approaching.

The figurative meaning of the poem is obvious since it describes tough choices we have to make, especially during a dilemma. The first literary device of metaphor of the yellow nature to mean autumn occurs in the beginning of the woods and has the effect of making choices at old age or at the fall of one’s life. The second literary device to be discussed is that of antithesis and occurs in the first stanza where the traveller wishes to “travel both” roads at the same time. The device has the effect of explaining confusion and lack of a definite choice of

Observing the form of ‘The Caravan’, the reader can see that the poem is all one stanza and the lines are of various lengths, but are not too different. The lines appear to be undulating, and the effect of this may be to represent the ups and downs of a relationship. Furthermore, there are few full stops in the poem and the sentences get progressively longer. For example, the first full stop appears after the first two lines; the next sentence stops after six lines, then eight, and the last sentence is twelve lines long. This implies the idea of breathlessness, suggesting that what the couple is doing is exciting and exhilarating. However, Pollard creates pauses through the use of commas and dashes at the end of the most lines, which may suggest that although they are breathless and excited, the couple wants to take time to pause and enjoy the

The first section of Hardy’s poem “At Castle Boterel” is just the first stanza and like Heaney’s poem, it sets the scene for extended descriptions of his strong memories. It opens in the present with Hardy “driving to the junction of lane and highway”, both of which are significant to Hardy’s life at the time – the junction indicates Hardy has to make a decision on wheter to move on with his life or stay stuck in the past, the lane signifies his relationship with Emma, and the Highway represents the rest of his life. Pathetic fallacy of the “drizzle” falling on the “wagonette” reflects the sombre, unhappy quality of the present. When Hardy says that he looks “behind” this is symbolic of him about to look back on the time in his life with Emma. The adjective “fading” conveys the fact that despite the fact that the forthcoming memory is strong, things are fading in his head due to old age.

C. Day Lewis finds that the effect of the rhythm in Remembrance is ‘extremely powerful, extremely appropriate’ and that ‘it is the slowest rhythm I know in English poetry, and the most sombre’ , effectively allowing Bronte to convey the grief of remembering.

The next two lines also have a Romantic link to Coleridge's aeolian harp and the music it made at another dusk when it exemplified Unity, "one Life within us and abroad/ Which meets all motion and becomes its soul". A "wild harp" is also the image opening Coleridge's own "Ode to the Departing Year", a poem in which the harp is unable to evoke a lasting hope (Coleridge, 56). Now , at the turn of the nineteenth century in Hardy's poem, the lyric

When Coleridge wrote the poem, the first 36 lines were written in third person, in a trancelike state where he describes a grandiose palace with miles of surrounding countryside. The rest of the poem was written in first person after a visitor interrupted him causing him to lose his train of thought so that he could no longer recollect the dream in totality. There are four ways in which rhythm has been effectively utilized though the poem does not follow a traditional pattern. First, the meter or pattern of stressed, i.e. long and unstressed, i.e. short syllable changes throughout the poem. Iambic tetrameter has been used in the first stanza, in lines 1 to 4, for e.g.

The Structure, style and poetic techniques of a poem contribute greatly to the development of the central idea of a poem. Three poems with central ideas that stood out to me were ‘The Darkling Thrush’ by Thomas Hardy, ‘Days’ by Philip Larkin, and ‘Remembrance’ by Emily Brontë. The central idea of each of these poems revolve around the idea of time and change. Firstly, I will discuss how in ‘The Darkling Thrush’ the simple and traditional structure, the bleak yet straightforward style and techniques such as vivid imagery and capitalisation combine to develop the central idea of change. The same can be said for the simple structure and style used in ‘Days’ which combine with poetic techniques such as metaphors to develop Larkin’s argument against time and change. Finally I will discuss how the idea of time is developed through techniques such as vivid imagery and symbolism in ‘Remembrance’ along with changing styles and a slow, consistent rhythm.