Themes

My last post looked at the theme of fate and free will in a couple of Hardy’s poems, but this post is a more in-depth look at one of those poems.

In “Going and Staying,” Hardy gives us his view of time, and its nature. This lovely little poem is not a mere observation of time, the constant of life, but it is a roadmap, a guidebook to the intricacies of time. It shows us how time flows, its nature, its effect of us, its effect on the world, and even its tripartite structure. The poem, though it is a short 15 lines, packs all of these elements into its metrical form, its formatting, and its other metaphorical and poetic mechanics.

Beginning, the overall theme of the poem, if taken as a whole, is clearly time. Time is the ever-flowing part of our lives, and Hardy gives us that image in the first stanza. Each piece of the poem has something to do with movement or with something temporal. The “moving sun-shapes” let us infer the movement of the sun as a day passes, the brook is flowing, the “moonlit May” again instills the idea of all things being trapped in a temporal universe (ll. 1-5). These images continue in the second and third stanzas with the mentions of “seasons,” “bleed,” and not to mention the words reused from the title: going and staying (ll. 6-7). The third stanza is the most blatant use of time-related language. Hardy confronts time head-on, and even describes Time as something ethereal, something just beyond our grasp, but still active in our lives.

While the words themselves lend us the thematic concerns of time, we can extrapolate that theme to the layout of the poem as well. The poem is in three stanzas, representing the three parts of time: past, present, and future. The first stanza gives us the feeling of good times, of outdoor activities as the sun casts long shadows, the pleasant murmuring of the brook, the cool Spring evenings, “but they were going.” These are pleasant memories of the past, of things since ended. The second stanza takes us into the winter, into the cold and bleak time of year. Everything nice has faded, and in the present, cold reality is what stares us in the face. The final stanza looks forward to the foggy future, and it realizes that what was good then has faded. What is bad now will fade. And in their due course, all things good and bad will fade as one. Hardy’s tripartite poem seems directly related to our attitudes toward tripartite Time. Don’t we often wish for the simpler days of the past, in lieu of the difficult times we are facing now? How much easier is it to cling to the pleasantries of the past instead of focusing on what’s in front of us now? The future, then, is ethereal, is unattainable. We can never live in the future, only in the present, and Hardy’s exactly right: the niceties of the past and the harsh reality of the future will both be obscured by time. The good will be replaced by bad, the bad will be replaced by good, and, to steal from Browning, “God’s in his heaven, and all’s right with the world” (“Pippa Passes”).

Hardy’s meter also gives us a view of his thoughts on the nature of time. Not only do his stanzas tell us of the tripartite structure of time, but also do his metrical tendencies show that tripartite structure, and the subtle differences in those parts. The meter tells us that time is, by and large, regular, plodding ever onward without change; however, sometimes, it may not seem so. Sometimes things take longer than we’d expected. The meter in the first and third stanzas is exactly the same: iambic tetrameter in the first line, the same plus an extra short syllable in the second, iambic tetrameter in the third and fourth lines, and two iambic feet and an extra short syllable in the fifth. The sameness of these two stanzas is akin to the steady pace of time for eternity past and eternity future. In either case, time is fixed, and nothing can make past events closer to the present, and nothing can make the events of the future further away. It’s even, and it’s symmetrical. The further away the past, the closer the future, and vice versa. The middle stanza, however, is unique from the other two.

In the middle paragraph, the measured, symmetrical meter gives way to a more chaotic beat. This stanza has the same basic pattern, but there are a few anomalies. The first line begins with an inverted iambic foot. The second line is almost metrically the same, but just before the last foot, Hardy has added an extra short syllable. Rather than having nine syllables, this second line has ten. The fourth line is almost entirely metrically different. Rather than the strict iambs of the other stanzas, this line is setup this way: inverted, inverted, double long, iamb. Changing the meter for only this stanza, the stanza on the present, shows us that while the underlying structure of Time is the same, the present is chaotic and dynamic. In contrast to the evenness of the past and the future, the present is able to be grasped, to be controlled, and while Time itself will always continue on, the present is less stable than either of the other two pieces of the structure of time.
The rhyme scheme, too, gives us a clue about where to find another statement about the nature and persistence of Time. Each of the three stanzas follows the same rhyming pattern, ABAAB, but the A rhyme is replaced in the two other stanzas. The B rhyme is repeated throughout the poem, and like Time, remains a constant in all parts of our lives. The B rhyme also falls on the same lines in every stanza. This measured consistency is another indication of the easy, measured consistency of Time. Time never changes, its ever-presence

The persistence of the B rhyme is, in itself telling, but it signals another interesting element of the poem which, in yet another way, illustrates Hardy’s insistence that Time does not stand still and is always flowing. Looking at the B rhymed words, all of them end with –ing. Grammatically, verbs ending in –ing are participles, which implies a continuation of action, whether relegated to the past, or continuing from past to present, or even continuing from the present on into the future. It’s this repetition of description of continuing action that gives us the sense that all of these events are taking place in some temporal structure, and the fact that it’s continuing necessarily means that time is moving around and through whatever action that may be. The repeated participial verbs give the poem a sense of motion, and that motion is the inescapable flowing of the great river of Time.
Hardy wanted to illustrate to us the nature of Time, and its multi-faceted structure. Hardy’s comments on time permeate the poem, from the overt in the diction itself to the clandestine and subtle in the rhyming pattern, the meter, even in individual metric feet. The poem is rich with comments on time, and what may seem like a simple musing on the flow of time, is actually a deep, meditative, intentional look at time, its features, its nature, and its structure.

Here are some thoughts on a couple of Thomas Hardy’s poems.  Enjoy!

Thomas Hardy’s poetry plays with the metaphysical aspects of our world: time, fate, free will, among others.  By and large, the verdict seems to be against the will of man, and the events of our lives are but circumstances brought on by fate, mere consequences of a “Powerfuller” than ourselves’ tosses of his dice or whim.  Although, occasionally, human choice is championed, if not so far as to change our circumstances, certainly as far as adapting to such circumstances as may come our way.

First of all, Hardy’s “Going and Staying” gives us a glimpse of Hardy’s insistence on the transitory nature of the world around us.  Alternately, the reading could be that humans are the transitory objects. With either reading, humans have no choice in things.  In “Going and Staying,” a constant flow cannot be denied: the final lines of each stanza make that stance clear enough. “Going,” “staying,” “dissolving”—each of these imply movement; however, the movement is not relegated to either time or humans solely.  The first stanza seems to imply that it is time what moves, with the “sun-shapes” moving “on the spray,” and such thing were things that we (humans) “wished would stay;/ But they were going.” In this instance, we are stuck still while the things we want vanish. Their movement is not controlled by us, but it happens all the same.  The second stanza is similar. When the bad things come, we’re likewise stuck with them, and we wish they “would go;/ But they were staying.”  In this case, also, we’ve got no choice in the matter; we’re stuck with the bad. The metaphor can read either way: we’re stuck floating along in time without being able to choose where we stop or tarry, or we’re stuck in place, with time flowing around us, without our being able to control it.  The result is the same: we’re helpless, and all things, good and bad, just happen to us.  There’s hope, though, in the final stanza.  While all things remain transitory, this includes the bad as well as the good, and we are not doomed to spend an eternity enduring any one state.

“Coming and Going” isn’t the only piece of Hardy’s oeuvre which leaves us with a less-than-stellar view of our status in the universe. “Hap” also has a rather glib view of the ability of man to effect change in his own life.  Indeed, the title even lends itself to a certain bias: “Hap,” as in “happening” or “happenstance,” is already indicative.  Indeed, the poem leaves no large doubt as to its verdict: man is a plaything of the gods, and there’s nothing about his circumstance he’s in control of.  The third line gives the whole thing away.  “Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,” the speaker wishes the gods to say.  Similarly, the final two lines also succinctly give the answer to the question of man’s free will: “These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown/ Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.”  In either case, human kind is really stuck with the predetermined events of our lives.  In fact, to make matters worse, the god he wishes would reveal himself as some grand tormentor doesn’t even exist.  The speaker wants a point to focus his angst, but even in admitting that such a point does not exist, he does not admit to having anything whatever to do with the events of his life.  God or no god, fate rules the day.

“Going and Staying” and “Hap” do not entirely agree, though.  The final stanza of “Going and Staying” offers us a place to focus our attention: on the revolving “ghostly arms” of Time.  “Hap” wishes for such a point, but states that point does not exist.  Despite the disagreement between the two poems on the existence of a specific higher power, they both relegate man to the position of passenger.  Man does not captain the boat on the river of time, and through the fjords of life.  Freewill, then, isn’t given a chance, and our lives are entirely predicated on fate. Right?

The second stanza of “Hap” while on its surface and continuation of the wishes for the god, that focusing point, actually gives a slightly different view of the role of man in the universe.  The message isn’t so much in the words themselves, as in their implications.  Upon hearing that all of the speaker’s problems are the cause of “some vengeful god,” the speaker “then would I bear, and clench myself, and die….”  The speaker would be “steeled” and “half-eased,” even.  What this implies is that even given what the speaker considers a negative situation, he would find some solace.  The only way, it seems, to find solace in an admittedly bad situation is to find it, which is an action, an exertion of force.  If that’s the case, even if the situation is out of one’s control, one can still choose how to react to such a situation.  The speaker is in what he sees as a bad situation; however, he has found a way by which he can find relief, even if he becomes “half-eased.”  Even though his method of escape from his problems does not exist in actuality, it does champion the human’s ability to hope, to see another side of one’s situation.

Overall, freewill isn’t really existent in these two examples of Hardy’s work, and the feeling is largely deterministic.  Time either moves on without you, or moves you on down, without regard to what you might want. The circumstances we find ourselves in have been predetermined, and there’s nothing that we can do about it, but we can find a method of escape. We can change our view and our feelings about the situation.  While we may not be able to captain the ship of our lives, we can at least choose our seat.

Literature is rife with coming of age stories. Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Things Fall Apart, Catcher in the Rye and a myriad others all have the “growing up” theme in them.

Just recently, I finished reading Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. The novel is a touching picaresque jaunt through the summer of a twelve-year-old boy in Green Town, IL. Douglas, the boy, is like any young boy, wanting adventure and fun, seeing magic in everything and being often faced with situations with which he suddenly sees differently than before.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post, as with all literary analysis, will contain spoilers if you have not read the story.  The novella is available online through the Gutenberg Project. –Tyler

In The Awakening, Kate Chopin paints a masterpiece of the Creole culture, and one woman’s struggle to survive in it. Edna Pontellier, the story’s protagonist, undergoes an awakening. She is transformed from the confused, soft, delicate, little flower of LeoncePontellier into an independent, artistic, free woman of the world. Almost. Edna, even when she asserted her freedom, was powerless, unable to overcome her culture. In her desperation, she takes the only action she feels that she has left: She swims way out into the ocean to drown. Her suicide depicts the hopelessness of the whole struggle, of her inescapable powerlessness. What if, however, Edna wasn’t so powerless after all? Edna’s position as a woman afforded her great power, not a dearth of it. She held sway over men more than she was aware, and her suicide was a rash decision, which ultimately made Edna her own greatest foil. Chopin goes to great lengths to impress upon her audience the stark hopelessness of the woman of that culture, but the text unravels around the assumed helplessness of women, showing Edna to be, in fact, a woman of great power, even if she never realizes it.

Read the rest of this entry »