proot the bodies of these helpless humans and eat them lavishly, thriving on the dead meat. He does not blame them for doing this but rather it is their instincts and habit.
Instead he blames the people for defiling the dead man’s name and not the hyenas, who only seek to satiate their hunger and not disgrace anybody. All poems tell us about the war behind the scenes. They describe to us the things that are not told to those who are living at home. They tell us the things are kept hidden and ‘censored’ from the general public. They tell us emotional and dramatic experiences to the more horrific and gruesome experienced and seen only by those who were on the battlefield or who had contact with those in the war.
I will now give a detailed analysis of each poem together with evidence, using quotations from the poems. A Wife in London explores the hardship and suffering felt by those that were thousands of miles away from the fighting. It is set during the winter months, “sits in the tawny vapour”, a time when people are feeling gloomy and sad. There is a lot of strong imagery used within the poem to reflect the woman’s feelings and emotions. The metaphor of the fog shows that the woman is in complete darkness, both literally and in the sense that she is deeply saddened and grieved.
This use of scenery to reflect a person’s mood is called pathetic fallacy. Just as fog slowly fades away, it is as though this woman’s fears and sadness to will fade away. However, the woman’s hopes are dashed when the fog gets thicker in the next few lines. “Like a waning taper The street lamp glimmers cold. ” The waning street lamp shows that there is no chance of the fog clearing as the light slowly fades from sight because of the thickening fog. Similarly, the woman’s thoughts and hopes are getting more and more pessimistic until they too will become cold with sadness and grief.
But the fact that the street lamp is glimmering, it shows there is still hope for the woman. The next verse, “A messenger’s knock cracks smartly, Flashed news is in her hand Of meaning it dazes to understand Though shaped so shortly: He-has fallen-in the far South Land … ” The instantaneous crack of the messenger destroys all her thoughts. Her mind is frozen and she fails to think properly. The little happiness that was inside her has been destroyed by a single knock. It is as though she knows for definite that it is the telegram boy’s knock and no one else’s.
This shows that the woman was slightly pessimistic and did not believe entirely that her husband would return. At first she is so shocked that she fails to understand what the letter says, but after coming back to her senses she reads the dreaded news of her husband’s death. The second part of the poem is the where Hardy uses his irony. The most ironic thing about the second part is that the woman receives a page full letter from her husband of his hoped return, “Page-full of his hoped return”. Another ironic thing about the second part is that “the fog hangs thicker”, although the woman is receiving good news.
The fog hanging thicker again reflects the feelings felt by the woman of her having lost hope completely and there not being a way back for her to see her husband. More irony is shown when Hardy writes, “Fresh – firm – penned in the highest feather”. This is ironic because of the fact that it does not matter as to whether the letter was written in highest feather or not because the man is dead, “his hand who the worm now knows”. This adds to the irony also. The same hand that had written using the highest feather is now worth nothing and a mere corpse for the worms to feed off.
As winter shows dullness and gloominess, its opposite, summer, seems to have a more cheery mood to it. “And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn In the summer weather, And of new love that they would learn. ” This shows that the summertime was a time for the husband and wife to go out with each other and make ‘new love’ as the poem suggests. This could either mean that the couple had a little fallout between them and would sett