Thomas Hardy As War Poet 66546x

Thomas Hardy as War Poet

Introduction  Thomas

Hardy , English poet and novelist.  One of the greatest English writer of the 19th and early 20th century.  Father , a stonemason influenced him to take up a career as an architect.  Gothic architecture influenced his poetry.  Derived a love of music from father and devotion to literature from mother.

Continued………. She introduced him to folk songs, Latin poets and French Romances.  He was apprenticed to a church architect , wrote poems idealizing rural life.  Beginning at the age of 58, he published many volumes of poetry over 900 poems in all.  His poetry is straight to the point favored the lyric and ballad forms of poetry. 

Hardy’s Style of War Poems

Form  Writes in a variety of tightly structured forms with well defined rhyme schemes.  Poems are arranged in regular stanzas.  Achieve song like effects. Example: But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. (The Man he Killed)

Speaker  Some times speaks in autobiographical

tone and other times as an abstract observer.  He also favors dramatic dialogue. Example: They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined -(Drummer Hodge)

Tone  Tone ranges from awe to despair.  Images nature of frequently used.  In his role of detached observer , Hardy’s tone his frequently full of knowing irony. Example: I shot him dead because.. Because he was my foe, Just so; my foe of course he was That’s clear enough, although (The man he killed)

Irony  He delights in contrasting human expectations with fate.  Illustrates cruel irony of people’s lives.  When dealing with war, irony is sarcastic. Example: “Ha, ha. It will be warmer when I blow the trumpet (if indeed I ever do; for you are men, And rest eternal sorely need).” (Channel Firing)

Language  Frequently uses rustic diction and syntax.  Some times capitalizes words mid-line to emphasize a point.  Uses unusual compound words. Imagery  It is descriptive and real.  Uses metaphorical language.  Images are symbolic of ruin.  Uses nature as a symbol of ing of time.

Themes  Explores the theme of rural life and nature, love and loss, cosmic indifferences, the ravages of time, the inevitability of death, past , role of fate, transience of life, family and relationships, human vanity, role of nature and inhuman ironies of war.  Hardy’s concept of Immanent Will.

Thomas Hardy’s Crude War War poems do not glamorize war.  They show an honest look at battlefield showing the irony, crudeness and cruelty of war.  War is irrational.  It is not heroic.  He regards human being as always ready to participate in the game of war fare with out ever learning a lesson from past wars. 

The Man He Killed It shows the irony of war.  The reader is shown irony of situation ware there is a discrepancy between actual circumstances and those that seem appropriate to the reader.  Main character is at a bar and drinks with a man.  The poem reads: “ He and I but met /By some old ancient inn/ We should have sat us down to wet/ Right many nipperkin”. 

Continued…..  The two men drink and have fun.  Then the poem turns to battlefield where the to meet again.  Here they are enemies and shoot at each other.  “ I shot at him as he at me ”.  The main character kills the man with whom he had a drink.  Hardy comments on the irony of situation…

Continued…..  “Yes; how quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down / You treat, if met where any bar is”.  Hardy states that in war your enemy is your enemy.  War does not stop for friends caught on opposing sides.  War is crude.

Channel Firing Hardy uses certain techniques to convey the theme of the crudeness of war.  In this poem guns firing out at sea are so loud that they wakeup the dead.  This contains a hyperbole, with the dead waking.  Guns would not really wake the dead, but when they go off like that, no one alive can sleep…. 

Continued….  The dead think it is judgment day.  But God tells them, “No; It’s just gunnery practice out at sea” and He comments on how war is getting worse. “All nations striving strong to make/Red war yet redder.”  When God comments on how cruel war is, the reader knows how bad it is.  It is a unique type of personification, with the dead talking.

Drummer Hodge Uses imagery to describe the burial sight of an English soldier who had fought in a battle in Africa.  Describes the surroundings as foreign constellations in the sky, the unfamiliar dust which he is buried under.  The start demonstrates the crudeness of war . “They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest/ Uncoffined - just as found”.  The man dead bravely but is buried with no coffin . How glamorous is that? 

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Hodge's name - to some a snobbish term for a country “bumpkin”, but not to Hardy, who is sympathetic. The details of Hodge's burial - is it dignified? What is missing? What we learn of the battle - for what strategic position is it fought? Why all the hurry in the burial? The shortness of Hodge's service before his death - his unfamiliarity with the country and its soil. Why is this important? The way Hardy uses Afrikaans words in the poem to show this. The irony of Hodge's being a part of this alien land forever. The repeated references to the stars. The presence or absence of comment on war in itself in the poem. The economy of the poem - how much does Hardy manage to say in these eighteen lines? Rhyme and metre. What you think of the poem, and why?

Conclusion Thomas Hardy was not obviously not a er of war. He uses his style of death to convey perhaps a feeling of protest. He uses his techniques of imagery, irony, hyperbole and personification to express his common theme: war is crude.