In What Ways Does Hardy Use Storytelling Techniques To Tell His Story Effectively?

‘Far From The Madding Crowd’ was written by Thomas Hardy in the year 1874. However, the story was set around thirty five years previously. Hardy wrote the story fundamentally with the aim to idealise rural life, as he felt that this was a great lifestyle that was disappearing much to his displease. The trigger for the writing of this book may have been the 1851 census which revealed that more people were living in the towns/urban areas than in the rural. This was a result of the Industrial Revolution.

The idealisation cannot just be seen in the novel, but can also be seen in the storytelling techniques that he uses to tell it. The general presentation of the rural area is a warm and friendly one.

In chapter five, Gabriel loses all his ewes due to the pursuit of an inexperienced sheep dog. Hardy uses pathetic fallacy here when he describes the moon as an ‘attenuated skeleton’ and says the pond ‘glittered like a dead man’s eye’. The descriptions of the environment really help emphasise how distraught Gabriel is at the tragic loss of all his two hundred ewes. This suppor...