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.

Hardys 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 , Hardys

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
Thats clear enough, although
(The man he killed)
Irony
He delights in contrasting human

expectations with fate.

Illustrates cruel irony of peoples 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 passing 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.
Hardys concept of Immanent Will.
Thomas Hardys 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; Its 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?

 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
supporter 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.