Thank you!

Hello all,

It is extremely gratifying to see views coming in from all parts of the world, more so to see how many English enthusiasts we have out there!

Many many thanks to all of you who visit this Page regularly :)

This overwhelming response has really made me want to put up more notes - it would be great if you could leave comments below if you require notes for any text specifically, I would be more than happy to glance through my folders and post those up if they could be of assistance to anyone!

Thanks again and keep visiting! :)

Aspects of Narrative in The Great Gatsby

THE GREAT GATSBY – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Setting:

The Great Gatsby suggests rather than develops the era of the twenties, it does evoke a haunting mood of a glamorous, wild time that seemingly will never come again. The loss of an ideal, the disillusionment that comes with the failure to compromise, the efforts of runaway prosperity and wild parties, the fear of the intangibility of that moment, the built-in resentment against the new immigration, the fear of a new radical element, the latent racism behind half-baked historical theories, the effect of Prohibition, the rise of a powerful underworld, the effect of the automobile and professional sports on post-war America – these and a dozen equally important events became the subject of The Great Gatsby, a novel that evokes both the romance and the sadness of that strange and fascinating era we call the twenties.

The Great Gatsby is a novel that is set against the ending of the war. Both Nick and Gatsby have participated in the war, although like much of the historical background in the novel, these events are more implied than developed. When Nick first meets Gatsby, Gatsby asks, “Your face is familiar... Weren’t you in the Third Division during the war?” Nick tells him, “Yes... The ninth machine-gun battalion,” to which Gatsby responds, “I was in the Seventh Infantry until June nineteen eighteen.”

Imagery:

Fitzgerald has described events such as European immigrants bringing with them socialist ideas, or the growing resentment of “foreigners” among Americans in The Great Gatsby. He speaks of the streets of New York filling up with people with “the tragic eyes and short upper lips of South-Eastern Europe,” an illusion that gets picked up with Meyer Wolfsheim and his “gonnegtions”.  Fitzgerald also described blacks coming from the South to cities like Chicago and New York. As Gatsby and Nick enter the city over the Queensboro Bridge, they see a panorama of ethnic faces outlined against the skyline of the new city, itself one of the unstated forces at work in the novel. The Tom Buchanans control the legal institutions of this city, and the Meyer Wolfsheims control the underworld.

Imagery and Foreshadowing:

-          The owl-eyed man steps from a car “violently shorn of one wheel” – next chapter, we find out that Tom Buchanan was involved in an automobile accident outside of Santa Barbara where he “ripped a front wheel off his car.” – Myrtle Wilson killed by an automobile

-          Rain falls on the reunion of Daisy and Gatsby – Rain falls on Gatsby’s funeral

-          Daisy and Jordan sit on a couch that seems to float to the ceiling – in Chapter 7 they sit on the same couch oppressed of the heat, as if the airiness of their being has finally come down to earth

-          The carnival gaiety of Gatsby’s parties disintegrates under Daisy’s disapproving eye

-          The city that Nick sees in its “wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world,” gives way to the reality of death in chapter 4 where, “A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms.”

-          The copy of Clay’s “Economics” that Gatsby reads while waiting for Daisy is apt for a woman whose voice is “full of money”

-          The “out-of-date timetable” that Nick uses to write down the names of Gatsby’s guests proves the obsolescence of Gatsby’s dream

-          The words that Myrtle speaks when she first meets Tom, “You can’t live forever, you can’t live forever,” reverberate with irony

Themes:

A thematic subcurrent of The Great Gatsby involves a sense of a new, urban public manipulated by power brokers, and Nick’s sudden awareness that a World Series can be fixed gives him insight into the corruptibility of this vast world.

Fitzgerald was working within terms of several broad themes in this novel. One involves the theme of America, the initial sense of promise of the New World as it was played out by the Frontier and transformed by the new megalopolis. A second involves the theme of love and romance, embodied in Daisy Fay and played out and transformed in her five years of marriage with Tom Buchanan. A third, of course, involves Gatsby himself, his internalising these themes - first, by modelling himself on Dan Cody and second, by making his reunion with Daisy inseparable from the idea of self.

When one lost the sense of life or promise, which Fitzgerald characteristically predicated on youth – then life lost its sense of wonder, its splendour, and its romantic promise. To desire was, ironically, more important than to have. The man who had great wealth, Tom Buchanan, or the man who was beaten by life, George Wilson, lacked the intensity of experience of a Gatsby who was a “son of God” and who “sprang from the Platonic conception of himself,” as the novel tells us. To lose the romantic conception of oneself is to move to hellish world, which in the novel is embodied by the valley of ashes and incarnated by George Wilson, who appropriately becomes the agent of Gatsby’s death when Gatsby loses his sense of wonder and “romantic readiness”, when his world becomes “material without being real” and a rose becomes “grotesque.”

Theme of Lost Past:

-          Over wound clock

-          Declining seasons of the year: Novel begins in late spring and ends in late autumn

                                                     

Theme of romantic exhaustion and lost promises:

-          Intensified by ash heaps and dust imagery

-          “Mingled her dark thick blood with the dust” – language infuses both religious and romantic meaning.

-          Tom’s remark, Gatsby “threw dust into your eyes,” not only picks up the dust/ashes imagery but connects it with the theory of seeing/misseeing.

-          The custodian of the Valley of Ashes, an “ashen and fantastic figure,” George Wilson murders the green dreamer, Gatsby is ironic

-          Violence of Myrtle’s death is attached to the many references to bad driving and moral carelessness

-          ‘Green light’ at the dock suggests Gatsby’s fertile dreams and money

Absence of God:

-          Except for Gatsby’s godlike sense of the potentiality of self, God has withdrawn from this world and is replaced by the commercial billboard with the blind eyes of T.J. Eckleburg, and embodied by the equally blind eyes of the owl-eyed man who appears at Gatsby’s party and reappears at his funeral, bridging the connection between the two, just as the end product of Gatsby’s parties are embodied in the orange pulps and lemon rinds and by that other symbol of romantic waste and emotional exhaustion – the valley of ashes. This is a blind world because there is no source of moral vision.

Symbolism:

Gatsby and Moon Symbolism:

-          The ‘moon’ that bathes Gatsby’s house at the start of the novel

-          Same moon shines on Gatsby when he waves goodbye at the party

-          Stands vigil at Daisy’s house after the fatal accident

Gatsby and God Symbolism:

-          “She blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.” Note the word ‘incarnation’.

-          Called a “son of God.”

Structure of the Novel:

Both structurally and chronologically, The Great Gatsby builds towards Chapter 5, the scene in which Gatsby again meets Daisy after their long separation. In a nine-chapter novel, this is the exact halfway point; the first four chapters build toward this moment, while the last four chapters lead away from it.

Chapter 5 is the static centre of the novel. Here, past and present fuse; the dream comes as close to “incarnation” as it is possible for it to come. Fitzgerald infuses this section with time images and references.

Jay Gatsby:

What Fitzgerald did in The Great Gatsby was to raise his central character to a mythic level, to reveal a man whose intensity of dream partook a state of mind that embodied America itself. Gatsby is the last of the romantic heroes, whose energy and sense of commitment take him in search of his personal grail.

Gatsby brought his Western intensity East and found a “frontier” equivalent in the New York underworld, the world of professional gamblers, bootleggers, financial schemers and a new breed of exploiters that the East bred differently from the West. Such a man will stand out in “respectable” company because he will lack social credentials.

The romantic intensity that the pioneers brought to a new world, Gatsby now brings to a beautiful, but also rather superficial, self-involved, self-protecting, morally empty young woman. The power of this novel ultimately comes from the structured relationships between these narrative elements. We have two kinds of seeing in this novel: a visionary whose vision has been emptied and a moral observer who is initially unsympathetic to what he sees in the visionary. “Gatsby... represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn,” but who is eventually won over by what is compelling and poignant in Gatsby’s story. Nick comes to see that Gatsby’s fate cannot be separated from his own or from the destiny of America.

Gatsby’s Father Figure – Meyer Wolfsheim:

Meyer Wolfsheim becomes Gatsby’s second father figure and introduces him to the New York underworld. It is thus with money that comes from bootlegging, gambling and bucket shops that Gatsby makes the fortune that allows him to buy his mansion on West Egg. When Nick confronts Wolfsheim after Gatsby’s death, he asks him if he had started Gatsby in business. “Start him! I made him!” “I raised him out of nothing, right out of the gutter.”

To Gatsby, money is money, and he never understands the difference between East Egg or West Egg. That is why Daisy is “appalled by West Egg.”

Gatsby - “Son of God”:

In one of the biographical recollections that Nick Carraway gives, he tells us that Gatsby “was a son of God” and that “he must be about His Father’s business.” The “Father’s business” turns out to be the pursuit of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.” Gatsby’s resolve comes at the moment he invents himself – “so he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent.” – And this moment comes simultaneously with Gatsby’s meeting Dan Cody. Once this equation is in place, Dan Cody takes on godlike proportions, and his business – the exploitation of America – becomes Gatsby’s business as well, even to the extent that Gatsby creates the kind of self necessary for such a pursuit.

Wilson goes out and kills the wrong man. Not only is God blind, but Wilson, his agent, is blind as well, and Wilson becomes an incarnate inversion of Gatsby. Pale of face, with yellow strawlike hair, he seems to leave a trail of ashes behind him, a possibility of death, the death of a godlike vision.

George Wilson:

The function of the exhausted apostles is taken over by George Wilson, who also sits in front of his garage – between the railroad and the road, watching the traffic go by. He is described as “one of those worn-out men” who “sat on a chair in the doorway and stared at the people and the cars that passed along the road.” Wilson and his wife live in “a small block of yellow brick,” surrounded by a “waste land” which locates them among the middle class. Their failed sense of wonder and disbelief in God makes their world an equivalent of hell, which is like the “impenetrable cloud” of dust that is prevalent in the Valley of Ashes.

Setting in The Great Gatsby

Write about some of the ways setting is created in “The Great Gatsby”.

·         Fact that Nick Carraway has returned to the place from where his family’s from, he’s an “original settler”

·         We find out about West Egg and East Egg through him, thus giving us a more realistic view of the entire setting of the story

·         Nick explains a lot of the happenings in the two places, gives us a feel of the kind of people or class of men and women who lived there

·         We see that there is a stark difference in the nouveaux riche who live in West Egg, while East Egg is home to the ‘historically rich’

·         Fitzgerald uses land and water to bring out the inaccessibility between the two – West Egg and East Egg are two islands separated by the Sound, or a stretch of water and this body of water acts as a barrier between the two

·         Within West Egg itself, we see contrast in Gatsby’s and Carraway’s house. The former’s residence is no less than a mansion, while Carraway, who considers himself well-off anyway, is struggling to make his ends meet at home. But, Nick takes pride in being the neighbour of such an influential and well-known man; this dissolves Nick’s feeling of inferiority compared to Gatsby

·         Nick describes the Buchanan’s house as an ‘elaborate Georgian Colonial mansion,’ and the fact that it has a lawn running for a quarter of a mile before the entrance to it almost gives the reader a sense that the house has been made to complement the garden, and not the other way round. Also, ‘bright vines’ adorn the mansion’s walls unlike Nick’s ‘thin beard of raw ivy,’ which again brings up the theme of difference in society

 

Repetition, Symbolism and Imagery in The Kite Runner

This is with respect to either AO2 and AO3 of the exam!

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

Repetition:

-          Baba’s love for Amir and Hassan is repeated by Amir’s love for his nephew Sohrab

-          Hassan’s rape echoes later in the rape of his son Sohrab

-          The reappearance of Sanaubar vitally emphasises on Hassan’s forgiveness of Amir, and how he is not afraid to forgive his own mother

-          The case of “one-eyed Assef”

-          The flying of kites

-          “Smiling” – Hassan’s harelipped smile, and then Sohrab’s smile

Symbolism:

-          Afghan carpets show pride in the community and the colours in them are relative to the colour in Amir and Hassan’s life as children

-          Blood: the rape scene, the execution at the stadium, the fight with Assef, hospital, etc.

-          The harelip: recalls suffering in the novel

-          Assef’s eye can be used as a symbol of the eye of evil and how good triumphs over it

-          Pomegranate tree

-          Hassan and Sohrab’s smile

Imagery:

-          Amir and Hassan’s childhood home and how it plays psychologically on Amir’s mind once he is in America

-          The flea market is an image of the life Amir has sacrificed along with Baba to save their lives; at the same time it reminds him of the inverse situation that Hassan must be facing, which brings us back to his suffering and inner devastation

-          The devastated city of Kabul demonstrates how the once peaceful city where snow fell soundlessly, and one could smell kebabs in the streets has now become victim to unbearable violence and how, Kabul, the city of Amir’s dreams has turned to rubble – this also casts an image of Amir’s dream of meeting Hassan turned to debris, i.e. it is never fulfilled

-          The imagery of Hassan’s rape and the execution are not described in detail, as a discreet explanation is better left to imagination. Nevertheless, the effect is so powerful and is maintained in such a way that we do not feel the lack of detail

An Analysis of Ode

This would not only be useful with respect to AO2, but also for those of you who want to do Auden in Section A Part (b) of the exam, where you deal with AO3 and AO4. Hope this helps!

An Analysis of Ode by W.H. Auden

An expose of military service and the dulcet decorum syndrome, "Ode" ("Though aware of our rank and alert to obey orders") typifies Auden's ability to fuse his high and low-styles of light verse, to maintain two modes of address to two audiences in the one poem. Despite the relaxed versification, carrying a suggestion of second-intensity poetry, the ode is in my opinion the finest achievement of Auden's first period. The loose stanzaic form, filled to bursting with Audenesque data, and the syntactical inventiveness, breaking with grammatical strictures to release an uninterrupted conversational flow, anticipate the methods of much in the later verse, from "Dover" to "In Praise of Limestone". The ode has suffered primarily by being read in terms of its epigraph, “To my boys”, and secondarily by being read exclusively in the context of The Orators. This has led to the standard interpretation that it is a poem in which a schoolmaster lectures his pupils on the evils of the school cadet corps, whereas, if the poem is read as a self-contained entity, there is rather more reason for supposing its setting to be prehistoric Scotland than a public school. Has it escaped so many critics that Auden might be, not haranguing his boys, but dedicating a poem to them, in the belief that they might find the problems entertained in "Ode" pertinent to their own situation?

It is noteworthy that Auden subsequently withdrew the dedication, evidently feeling that it furnished no aid to interpretation of the poem. Not that Auden's dedication was misplaced. Though it is wrong to insist that Auden addresses his boys in the ode (he addresses them through it), it is still true that a young student is its ideal reader, a reader who is capable of a fresh, generalist response, yet whose curiosity might be roused by certain of the more refractory details to further, specialist reading of his own. It is unfortunate that much of the following analysis has had to be devoted to a merely specialist interpretation. A school is not the wrong political context in which to set the ode's action, but it is only one of many. It would be a pity not to connect the ode with Auden's remark that he opposed fascism because, having taught in a school, he knew what it was like; and yet it does point to more than one setting for the poem. It would be a shame not to recognize that the schoolteacher with a foot in each camp, sympathetic to "the youngest drummer" while he works for the veterans and bishops, is the exact modern embodiment of the ode's persona. Yet a greater omission would be to fail to see how the ode creates a sense of political process by disrupting the reader's sense of definite social roles.

A greater loss would be not to notice that the persona's uncomfortably sliding scale of "us", and the other syntactical confusions by which he avoids admitting his own confusions of sympathy and role, dramatize Auden's poetic dilemma, his conviction that a poet must speak for "I and the public" and his scepticism any modern poet can. In "Ode" Auden succeeds in creating a poetry of the pronoun. "Ode" starts out on manoeuvres, but plunges quickly into the mental landscape of "the youngest drummer". His mind is invaded with all the mental paraphernalia of the military, rank, orders, frontiers and code-words: he is as nervously cocked as his pistol. In support of his present state of alert, he also "Knows the peace-time stories like the oldest soldier". He knows his nation's ancestral myth of how "tall white gods" once instituted the Audenesque garden of Eden, where men followed their specializations (“Skilled in the working of copper"), wild animals roamed plentifully, there was "an open wishing-well in every garden [And] love came easy". "The peace-time stories" are as vital to the young soldier's mental stability as tales of heroic action. They tell him that, though the Garden has been lost by negligence, military vigilance might regain it. His psychology pivots on the Garden of childhood where, as stanza six reveals, he had a bad fall: it is this garden, as well as the garden of his cultural inheritance, which he must protect from the encircling wilderness of moving grass. His private myth, of an innocence threatened by anxieties, overlaps conveniently with the social myth in which he has been reared, of a homeland threatened by secret aggressors.

 The ode is an action shot of a system replicating itself by means of its younger members; it is a study of social conditioning. Conditioned from the cradle by pious mother and warrior father, by peer-group expectations and the alternate barbs and overtures of his elders, by church and state, it is not surprising that his inner needs find fairly complete satisfaction in the outlets for action provided within the by now renewed system, that the questions he asks of himself receive fairly thorough answers from the established verities of his society. Only the overseeing persona, as he speaks of the verities "we" all acknowledge, by his over-protestation of the pronoun elicits an outsider's doubts and qualms as to where these blind acceptances might be leading.

Private and public myths coincide fairly well for "the youngest drummer" (who must also be the "recruit" spoken of in stanza three and after), but not fully, as an ambiguity of the persona's indicates. The recruit "Knows all the peace-time stories ... About the tall white gods", while remaining "frontier-conscious"; but is he not also "frontier-conscious, / About the tall white gods", to the point of confusing them with the much-publicized aggressors? In the third stanza, where both archaeological records, which would give information about "tall white gods", and espionage, which would give information about aggressors, are muddled together by the veterans, the recruit's confusion is shared by "all of us", as we pretend to be "perfectly certain". He asks his first empirical question, "Who told you all this?" and is promptly silenced by the veteran's remedy for all empirical doubt, "Go to sleep, Sonny."

Sleep heightens his confusion, however, for in his dreams he returns to the foundation of his psyche, the restored Eden: "in a moment / Sees the sun at midnight bright over cornfield and pasture, / Our hope ..." This is the ode's first crisis. If the recruit at this point identified aggressors and "tall white gods" as being one, and as being the party able to restore the Garden and the new millennium, he would turn against his elders to become a revolutionary. The system is saved only by his being in military training: there's no time to think or dream, he must get out on guard duty. He is jostled awake by "Someone", presumably the veteran, hears a brusque explanation-cum-apology, and stumbles out. Already his fate is sealed: he has taken over from the Old Guard.

Stanzas seven to nine present a diptych of "us" in the cathedral (the reader may imagine a spire) and the chthonic mirror-image, "them", "in a great rift in the limestone". The persona allows himself the perception that the veterans appear, not as conquerors of wine-dark seas, but as themselves wine-dark with bibulousness, but his remark has little more pungency than a later aside about inverted commas in newspapers. The principal force of the stanzas lies in the contrast between the bishop with his choirboys and the "scarecrow prophet" screaming his jeremiad, between "our" rather primitive shouting about past victories and "their" howl for vengeance, followed by a vow to the future. The more nearly one approaches the structure of Auden's early poems the more clearly is discovered that dualistic habit of thought, which was to take on epidemic proportions in some of his critical prose. In his poetry, by contrast, the dualism is usually held in an artistic suspension or developed dialectically or even criticized, as in this ode, when carried to Manichaean extremes.

Here the balancing of one side against the other makes prominent "our" party's lack of the figure of the Leader, "that laconic war-bitten captain". The allusion is not only to the ideals of heroism and fidelity to a leader, but also to the virtue of implicit obedience to the elder or veteran. Evidently the aggressors are impeccably trained in this virtue. In addition, by his capitalization of "Lord", Auden attracts his reader's notice to a tentative identification in The Battle of Maldon of Byrhtnoth, the man who gives his life for his nation, with Christ.

The medievalism continues, and continues to elucidate the realization, for an outsider, that the enemy is an objectification of the group's subconscious fears. In the motley ranks of the enemy are enrolled all whom the society has branded as evil, from drop-outs to bank-absconders and to those favourite whipping-dogs of the medieval preacher, the Seven Deadly Sins.

Noticeably, when they are externalized as aggressors, the Sins take on qualities diametrically opposed to those they display as inner weaknesses: Wrath is cunning; Envy is true to his profession,

Sloth "famed ... for her stamina", Greed "simple" instead of various, Gluttony "austerer than us" in pursuing his ends and Lust "skilful". Less immediately noticeable is the fact that

Auden has listed only six of the seven. The sin omitted is that which the medieval Parson considered the "general roote" of all the others, his is how Chaucer's Parson lists these "chieftaynes of sins":

Of the roote of thise sevene synnes, thanne, is Pride, the general

roote of aIle harmes. For of this roote spryngen certein braunches,

as Ire, Envye, Accidie or Slewthe, Avarice or Coveitise (to commune

understondynge), Glotonye, and Lecherye.

The reason for its omission, why "we" have ignored it, may be "we" have not recognized Pride as the true captain of the enemy, because to do so would require, firstly an unmilitaristic, religious humility, and secondly and more importantly, a degree of self- knowledge. The stanzas on the enemy are an elucidation of the logic of paranoia: so cunning is my enemy he pretends not to exist.

In the last two stanzas winter and cold have invaded the land, "We entrain ... for the North". The penultimate stanza, brief sketch of an industrial wasteland, is the inversion of stanza two; it is the sacking of the dream of the Garden. Fighting or Eden has destroyed it. With the last stanza comes the return to manoeuvres. In a real sense what the young soldiers are "doomed to attack" are "headlands". In the coming battle the distinctions and frontiers, in which they have been trained, ill melt and vanish, "snow down to the tide-line": they may discover the true battle, if they do not die first. With the ultimate breakdown of communications and the dissipation of all energy, the persona will be able to cease enunciating his insights. "We shall lie out there": death is his desperate solution. The last line is, of course, a multiple pun, referring to the lying position for firing, to the final self-deception in which the soldiers will be engaged, and to their deaths. The recruit has finally laid down his life beside the only Lord he has been permitted to love, the Lord of Fear.

At Castle Boterel - Poetic Method

At Castle Botorel

Poetic Method

Narrative Voice (Point of View):

This poem has been narrated by Hardy, and reinvents his memory with Emma, not resurrect it. Hardy is self-indulgent and this poem has resulted as of a consequence of his conscience being affected.

Structure and Form:

The poem is composed of seven stanzas with five uneven lines; it follows the ABABB rhyme scheme. The effect of the final short lines of every stanza makes the rhythm uncomfortable; it is interesting to note that an old memory has been triggered by a precise location that is described at the start of the poem. The rhythmic couplets at the end of every stanza (every last two lines) are effectively used to make subtle emphasis on contrast.

Genre and Style:

“At Castle Botorel” is an elegiac poem, as it mourns the passing of Emma and also talks of earlier days and their happy memories together. It has an interesting style/structure considering it has a hesitant opening (present), growing confidence and a description of youthful Emma in the body (past) and a faltering conclusion (present). It is curious how Hardy manages to both start and end in the present, and yet talk about his courtship with Emma in Cornwall so effectively.

Language:

The poem opens in the present with Hardy driving to the “junction of lane and highway” – at the very start, we are introduced to a situation where Hardy is at a crossroads; this signifies Hardy’s real life dilemma and his traumatic experience. We see pathetic fallacy in the phrases “drizzle bedrenches” and “fading byway”. They suggest the sombre and unhappy quality of the present. Also, “fading” could suggest Emma moving further away from Hardy, and the lessening importance of present reality.

Stanza two represents a romantic and positive image. “Myself and a girlish form benighted” – this line comes as a drastic change from the mournful lament of the first stanza. One could argue that “girlish form” is referring to the young Emma of the eighteen seventies and is recalling the Emma of the old. “In dry March weather”, we see a contrast with the present drizzle Hardy has mentioned earlier – apart from that, “dry March” has always been symbolic of new beginnings, and this refers to Hardy’s prime of life. The alliteration of “sighed and slowed” dramatizes the pony’s fatigue.

The idea of the future is very fluid in the third stanza. “Something that will not be balked of” is a line that presents an extremely romantic image, symbolic of the blossoming of Hardy’s and Emma’s love. The “something” is not clear, but it seems to refer to a declaration of love.

In stanza four, there is an emphasis on the importance of their trip to Castle Botorel. Hardy believes that “a time of such quality” had never been seen before in “that hill’s story”. It is curious to note how Hardy’s dismissive language fails to acknowledge anyone else’s love or experience – Emma is his only “substance.”

In the fifth stanza, Hardy increases the time-scale to the pre-human by emphasis on “primaeval rocks”; it symbolises the great age and permanence of the hill. It could be argued that Hardy’s use of the word “transitory” refers to the amount of temporary life nature must have witnessed. The caesura in the line, “Is – that we two passed” commemorates Hardy’s and Emma’s meeting.

“Time” has been personified as a real character In Hardy’s poetry, and has been portrayed as a stern taskmaster with the line, “Time’s unflinching rigour” – “Time” has also been referred to as a character who does things in a “mindless rote”; without thinking. The usage of “substance” to “phantom figure” shows the transition of the lively Emma to her ghostly appearance, reinforcing the theme of life and death.

“At Castle Botorel” has in it a melancholic ending with stanza six. The repetition in the phrase “shrinking, shrinking,” casts an image of persisting gloom and desperation. The caesura in the line, “For the very last time; my sand is sinking” shows the gradual breakdown in Hardy’s speech and the tumbling rhythm that crashes in the penultimate stanza. The imagery of the phrase “for my sand is sinking,” is that of an hour-glass, where Hardy’s time is ticking, that is, death awaits him. “Old love’s domain” could have three potential meanings – one, the region of a long-term relationship; two, the landscape of love; and three, love as viewed from old age. Either of these interpretations hold significant value in the poem, and the last line, “Never again” confirms the reader’s belief that yes, Hardy will never be able to experience true love again.

O What Is That Sound - Poetic Method

O What Is That Sound

Poetic Method

Narrative Voice (Point of View):

Clearly, this poem has two narrators, one who desperately questions out of fear and a sense of urgency, while the other reassuringly answers and gives hope to the reader – like a dialogue. It could also be argued that the first speaker is a woman, while the second is a man; they could also be married. This can be proved by the line, “I promised to love you”.

Structure and Form:

The most striking point of the poem is the repetition. Combined with the strong metre, the slow and steady rhythm that conveys a sense of a funeral march picks up pace and reveals a sense of urgency and desperation.

The poem follows an ABAB rhyme scheme, and the rhyming words at the end of every line emphasise the rigid structure of the poem. The “question-and-answer” form of the poem gives it an almost nursery rhyme effect.

The repetition in every stanza shows the repeated occurrence of fear and desperation, while the last line always being short signifies how life too is short – this also adds to the tumbling rhythm of the poem.

Genre and Style:

The poem is a ballad, and written in traditional ballad form with two narrators questioning and answering each other. Written in the inter-bellum period, the poem talks about war and the sacrifices and rationale changes a person undergoes. One could assume that the poem is set in Europe while the persecution of Jews was taking place by the Nazi party.

Setting:

The setting in this poem is that of a hillside town, and we can be sure of this as we see the phrase “down in the valley,” and “over the distance”. Also, this town seems to be pretty rural, as described are a “farmyard”, “the road down there,” and “horses”. We know little of the couple’s neighbours; just that nearby live a doctor, pastor and farmer, who apparently has done something “cunning”.

Language:

Firstly, every stanza begins with an “O” – this shows desperation and a fear of the unknown. The “thrills the ear” in the first stanza suggests something exciting; however, the “drumming, drumming” emphasises a betrayal to come, and a false sense of security. Every alternate line contradicts itself, and this furthers the image of confusion and panic throughout the poem. The “scarlet” used to describe the soldiers has connotations of blood, a warning or even the Nazis approaching their town.

The second stanza talks about the view from the couple’s window. The “flashing so clear” could refer to gunfire; one could also argue that, depending on one’s outlook, the light represented either Hope or Death. The Hope is being supported by the man while the woman fears the possibility of Death.

The poem revolves highly around the oppression the civilians are undergoing – the “gear” shows how well-armed the soldiers are, while the reference to “usual manoeuvres” makes the reader wonder whether the narrators are used to such violence, and hence question whether it is a “warning” they hear. The “wheeling, wheeling” could refer to the word “turning”, and this is significant as this is a turning point in both the narrators’ lives. We see the first direct inference at religious belief with the word “kneeling” – it is proved that even in times of grave despair, people such as the woman turn to God for reassurance.

In the middle of the poem describes the various inhabitants of the town, and no matter whether they are wealthy or not, the Nazis are after anyone who betrays or insults them. First, we are introduced to the Doctor, and those in the profession are usually wealthy or well-established. Moreover, the fact that the soldiers “stopped for the doctor’s care” show that he doesn’t mind helping the soldiers, and is true to his profession. Second, we see the parson, again reinforcing the theme of religious belief in the poem. When the woman says, “Or is it the parson they want,” we are convinced that she is aware that someone needs to be taken away. The prevalence of gossip in the community is also furthered when the woman says, “It must be the farmer so cunning, so cunning”- apparently, he has done something despicable and we are not allowed to sympathise with him on the account of being a working-class individual.

Towards the end of the poem, we see how Auden is not very sympathetic with human behavioural instincts. The woman exclaims, “Were the vows you swore deceiving, deceiving?” We see the betrayal of the man here, who chooses to save himself and sacrifice the other. It comes as an unprecedented shock to the reader, because the repeated usage of the word “dear” by the man throughout the poem was reassuring and believable.

Finally, the last stanza is narrated solely by the woman, after the man abandons her. The use of the word “it’s” symbolise the soldiers to be a huge monster, much like the unbeatable fascist force. The imagery of “boots heavy on the floor” is crude, as we imagine a war-time scenario, splashed with blood and bodies strewn around. The “burning eyes” also is interesting as it could be argued that they symbolise hatred, anger, passion or rage, moreover, it shows more violence to come – this is perhaps the most probable explanation as the poem ends here.

Neutral Tones - Poetic Method

Neutral Tones:

Poetic Method

Narrative Voice:

In Neutral Tones, a various mixture of iambs and anapaests builds a powerfully dulled monotone. The reader can almost hear the melodramatic voice of Hardy, with only slight hints of disgust and spite. Rather, the melancholy monologue carries on in a dull and withdrawn manner, only supporting the neutrality of the speaker. This dramatic monologue consisting of four tetrameter quatrains expresses themes of love and life and their interconnection, while simultaneously emphasizing death.

Structure and Form:

The poem is composed of four tetrameter quatrains that emphasise on the inevitability of the passing of time and Hardy’s attempt to rationalise and control. The ABBA rhyme scheme ends each of the four stanzas on the same rhyme they started on. The words "gray", "pond" and "God" are repeated from the first stanza to the last stanza giving 'Neutral Tones' a cyclic quality.

Genre and Style:

The emotional intensity of the poem doesn't come from any particularly emotive language, but in fact the lack of it, the detachment plaguing the speakers attitude seems to be the most shocking aspect of the poem. The poem is an elegy, and mourns the loss of an early relationship, as is evident when Hardy says, “The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing”.

Setting:

Winter and the lack of colour in the world around them, especially in the first stanza, are also chosen as part of the setting because it truly reflects upon the cold and dull changes that Hardy’s ever deteriorating love has presented. Winter paints the bleak theme of death and season change. The setting is quite colourless; the gray of the “grayish leaves” suggests Hardy’s depression and a forlorn look of the tree. The “starving sod” holds connotations of winter and cold, and the loss of fertility, and the beginning of an end. It symbolises the end of a life cycle, emphasising Hardy’s feeling of neutrality and emptiness. The “pond” signifies stagnancy; it could refer to the abrupt end of a relationship Hardy shared. However, in the last stanza, Hardy refers to “a tree,” – the lone tree could signify Hardy’s being marooned in life and his loneliness in the world around him.

Language:

Hardy witnesses the sun as being white, “as though chidden of God”. In this, the bitterness and tone that is emphasized throughout the poem is projected as guilt upon the Almighty. It seems Hardy feels that just as God could allow the sun to shine in its full splendorous yellow but has instead replaced it with a gloomy hue of white; his relationship with this woman is also cursed by a divine intervention.

The leaf which had “fallen from an ash, and was gray”, is symbolic of the way in which they too had fallen out of love. It is such a clever choice for Hardy to have included the ash tree within the poem. The bark of this tree is of a silvery-gray colour, and indeed, the colour of ashes themselves is gray, a decidedly "neutral tone". If the leaves are themselves symbolic of the couple then an image is painted of the two holding on to a life source that no longer has anything in store for them.

The statement, “Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove,” expresses that it does not go unnoticed by Hardy that the woman looks him up and down with wandering eyes. It projects the image of her searching every part of him, looking for something that had once captivated her, but now she finds nothing of interest in him. Perhaps the way her eyes rove also reflects the shallowness of her sight since there is no reference to her ability to look into him.

The Haunter - Poetic Method

The Haunter

Poetic Method:

Point of View (Narrative Voice):

This poem is written by Hardy with Emma as the imaginary narrator. It has been written with a female’s point of view, posing rhetorical questions, and desperately pleading that Hardy should acknowledge her presence or answer her questions.

It is interesting that Hardy gives voice to Emma, because he almost brings her back to life and gives Hardy a sense of security, and makes him believe Emma is still with him.

With each paragraph, the tone becomes more desperate. This is like a ballad that pleads with the Almighty (or the readers) for someone to listen to her requests.

Setting:

In stanza three, Hardy makes a lot of reference to the nature around him, and we learn that this may be a forest, or likewise. The “shy hares” and “night rooks” are evidence to the fact that Hardy travelled to woods after Emma’s demise to relive his happier days with her. The phrase “old aisles” is ambiguous; one could argue that the ‘aisles’ refer to either the old churches in the English countryside, or that they have connotations of the footpaths in the woods and copses. Again, “night rooks” gives us the impression of night-time nature, and we start to appreciate the apt description of the scene around Hardy. The entire description is open to interpretation due to the line, “I companion him to places only dreamers know,” – thus leaving the reader to further the suggested image.

Language:

The language in ‘The Haunter’ is interesting to analyse as the entire poem has been narrated in Emma’s point of view. In the first stanza, Hardy writes, “How shall I let him know?” This immediately betrays a sense of desperation and despair; we understand that Emma wants Hardy to acknowledge her presence and satisfy her with replies to her unanswered questions. She calls herself “faithful phantom” – this is paradoxical as she takes pride in being a loving and determined ghost, haunting Hardy wherever he goes. We also see the theme of emotional cleansing and self-pity in the second stanza where the line “Seldom he wished to go.” appears. The full stop at the end of the line suggests a finality which seems to accuse Hardy of selfishness and neglect towards Emma. In the very next line, we see his repentance with “He goes and wants me with him more than he used to do,”.

Typical of all Hardy poems, stanza three has been dedicated to nature, and its contrast with love and life. Hardy describes the night-time nature, where we see the “shy hares” and “night rooks” – these animals suggest the scene of a forest or woods, which Hardy has revisited after Emma’s death. The phrase “close as his shade can do,” leads us to question the real meaning. Many critics have gone ahead to say that the ‘shade’ actually refers to Hardy’s ‘shadow’, and that Emma was always following in his footsteps, implying Hardy’s neglect toward her and his self-centeredness. On the other hand, some feminist critics have commented that ‘shade’ symbolises a ‘ghost’, and that Emma tries to stay as close to Hardy as possible – again bringing up the theme of self-regret and pity.

Time and again, Hardy makes references to death in his poems. The use of the word “journeys” has connotations of both death and the ‘after-life’, something that Hardy is deeply questioning in this poem. Also, we are inclined to judge the narrator’s physical condition after the tragedy of Emma’s death. The dashes after the line, “I, too, alertly go? –“ not only carries out it its function as a caesura, but also symbolises a breakdown in speech.

We also know that Hardy is tired of his own desolate life from the line, “If he but sigh...” – this shows that Hardy is in mourning and is practically delusional and directionless. Another line that proves this statement is, “His fancy sets him wandering,” wherein ‘wandering’ could refer to the search for peace and answers in his quest of the existence of the after-life.

Again, Hardy makes use of a contrasting phrase, “good haunter” – it is this very paradox that forms the basis of the poem; how Emma dauntingly takes on the role of a faithful wife and stays with Hardy until his very end, no matter that they are on different sides of existence. Her sudden urgency and despair are conveyed in the line, “Quickly make him know”, and we see described Hardy’s weak and exasperated sigh, showing the psychological trauma he has undergone after Emma’s death.

The Voice - Poetic Method

The Voice

Poetic Method:

Narrative Voice (Point of View):

“The Voice” is written in the first person narrative, and is an attempt of Emma trying to communicate with Hardy. It is extremely critical to analyse narrative voice in this poem, as it has its title named after it. Throughout the poem, an air of ambiguity persists and the voice is unknown.

Structure and Form:

The poem follows the ABAB rhyme scheme and consists of four quatrains. The anapaestic metre comes away in the penultimate stanza. The quatrains show the inevitability of the passing of time, and Hardy’s consistent regularity is an attempt to rationalise and take control over it.

Genre and Style:

The poem is ominous, detached and clearly about someone’s passing. It is elegiac in style and pathetic fallacy has been deployed to add to the poetic effect.

Setting:

The only indication of setting we get in the entire poem is from the line, “Across the wet mead to me here,” – the “wet mead” could refer to an old countryside meadow which has been dampened by a shower of rain. The vague mention of this setting suggests Hardy’s love for nature and the meadow’s vastness conveys Hardy’s feeling of loneliness. Also, the “Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,” speaks of northerly winds, making it terribly cold.

Language:

The start of the poem is with “Woman” – immediately we see Hardy’s attempted detachment from his wife, Emma. The usage of “Woman” shows the struggle Hardy undergoes; he cannot fathom the death of a loved one. Towards the end of the first line, Hardy writes, “How you call to me, call to me,” – the repetition echoes throughout the poem and implies desperation and urgency of the ‘voice’ that is talking to him. The lines, “Saying that now you are not as you were / When you had changed from the one who was all to me,” does not use any punctuation until the end of the sentence, and is quite a long-winded way to say he, Hardy, at present, loves Emma as he did earlier, rather than the negligence he showed before her death. The long, unending sentence suggests Hardy’s entangled emotions and feelings. It is also interesting to note that this line uses an accusatory tone, almost as if Hardy is blaming Emma for her own death.

The second stanza of the poem talks about Hardy and Emma’s courtship and makes the reader sympathise with Hardy. “Let me view you, then,” is an imperative – the demanding tone could show Hardy’s determination to remember the Emma of the past. The “then” holds significance of the time gone by; the prime of Hardy’s life. “Even to the original air-blue gown!” forms the pathos of the poem, where the reader empathises with Hardy’s mournful state. The “air-blue” gown suggests a certain pureness and innocence about Emma, while the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence gives away Hardy’s excitement and genuine happiness to be able to view the Emma of the old.

The third stanza begins with a question – “Or is it the breeze,” – the ‘or’ forms a pivotal point of the poem, where he questions his own belief of whether it really is a voice that is calling him, or the wind. The phrase “to me here,” in the second line of this stanza shows Hardy’s true state where he is marooned in life by Emma’s demise. He again employs euphemisms such as “dissolved”, “Heard no more” and “wan wistlessness,” – the consonance of the “s” furthers the lifeless image of the life-death divide. The stanza ends with the phrase “far or near?” – the question justifies Hardy’s oblivion and the existence of the afterlife.

The final stanza of the poem results in the breakdown of the metre and rhyme scheme used in the poem, and is perhaps the most visual and cinematic piece of the poem. The caesura after “Thus I;” shows Hardy’s loss for words, while the alliteration of “faltering forward,” emphasises Hardy’s reluctance in moving forward, as he is directionless. “Leaves around me falling,” is highly significant both literally and metaphorically – the “leaves” could signify the life of a loved one, in this context, Emma. It also could be said that it exposes Hardy’s awareness of the seasons – the autumnal effect signifies the end of the life-cycle and death. “Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,” – this refers to northerly winds, which are extremely cold - this could also be interpreted as the frozen heart Hardy now has. The alliteration of “thin through the thorn norward” furthers the soft yet striking ‘voice’ of the wind, or, Emma. Again, this poem has an ambiguous ending; “And the woman calling” leaves us wondering whose voice it is that Hardy really listens to.