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Essay on thomas hardy as a novelist
Thomas Hardy's religious beliefs
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Thomas Hardy's views on God and Religion
Thomas Hardy was born into a religious family and brought up with very Christian values and morals. As he matured and was exposed to the new ideas of the time, he became conflicted in his views about God and religion. He was criticized for writings that many of his peers considered to be obscene, immoral and blasphemous. Throughout his adult life, Hardy considered himself to be an agnostic. His poems show that he was much more complicated than that. His writings show a Christian who was tormented by the fact that he was no longer able to believe in the church doctrine. He had a conflicted soul that was searching for some meaning. This is evident in his poetry, especially Hap and Channel Firing. In these two poems, Hardy reacts to a world with a god that is either indifferent to human suffering or nonexistent and replaced by random chance.
In Hap, one of Hardy's first poems, the author longs for any kind of god. Even a "vengeful god" (1) who finds amusement in human suffering would be preferable to the randomness that the poet sees. If Hardy could "know that thy sorrow is (God's) ecstasy" (3) then at least he would see some purpose in his misery. If only the poets "love's loss was (God's) hate's profiting" (4) then Hardy would be "steeled by the sense of ire unmerited."(6) In other words, even if God was cruel and uncaring, Hardy would be at least "half-eased" (7). He would be comforted by God's anger or wrath even if it was undeserved.
However by the third stanza Hardy shows that there is no god. It is not a "powerfuller than I" (7) which controls life. It is random chance that there is suffering. It is "Crass Casualty obstruct(ing) ...
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...or unto Christ. Hardy does not portray God in the typical fashions of his time. This is not a compassionate god. This is not a god who is just or forgiving. Channel Firings questions a God so callous that he leaves us simply to fend for ourselves.
In both Hap and Channel Firings Thomas Hardy presents a world with no hope of divine intervention. To Hardy the idea of a Christian God is dead. Although the poems are very different and were written many years apart, they each present a common theme. They show world of chaos and disorder. It is a world where chance is the law and fate is blind. Hardy's reaction to this world is shown is his writing. I think that Hardy longed to believe in God but could see no evidence in his time that such a god existed. It is evident that he was a poet who was conflicted and frightened by the very concepts that he was proclaiming.
Many people know the Christian God as happy, forgiving, and accepting of others. In the Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards’ sermon completely shocks and scares people by claiming that the Christian God is the only God, and if you weren’t to believe in him, you would burn in Hell and be destroyed. The tone of this piece in the eyes of Edwards is dedicated, passionate, and pro-Christian God. Edward achieves his purpose by using metaphors, repetition, personification, and visual imagery numerously throughout the sermon.
If God is powerful and loving the humankind, then why does He permit evil as well as suffering in this world? Various answers had been offered by many Christian philosophers and many victims of suffering, but there was not a lucid answer that could settle this argument permanently. God uses malicious acts of this world to rise up His own people and remind them that there is an opportunity that they can posses their eternal life. Literature, especially biblical literature has exploited this biblical nature to its fullest in various types of forms, including the play J.B. by Archibald MacLeish. In the play J.B, Archibald MacLeish reanimates and modernizes elements taken from the story of Job to come up with his own response to the ultimate question which has been asked by countless generations, “Why do the righteous suffer?” Throughout the play, Archibald MacLeish delineates the sudden corruption of J.B and his family, his calmness despite the helpless pieces of advice from the Three Comforters, and his unusual ending in order for God to test if one’s will and faith are strong enough to rebuild oneself after an irrational decadence.
Jonathan Edwards captured his audience’s attention by using descriptive analogies and extensive imagery. These images create a feeling of despair within these followers of God due to an extreme fear of the possibility of hell. He also uses an emotional appeal, allowing his audience to first be overcome by an overwhelming feeling of despair. At the end of this excerpt however, he will fill these Puritans with a sense of hopefulness, provided by the promise of eternal life in return for faithfulness. His persuasive techniques are specific to a certain type of audience or reader, so these methods may not be effective on all who encounter
With that being said, Hardy is pointing out that we should read between the lines. Everything within this poem is an unsaid message. For example, the wife's reaction, the knowledge of John Wayward, the coffin, even Wayward's name is an unsaid message. Those messages clearly point out that the wife cheated on the husband. They also point out the husband knew of the adulterous relationship between his wife and John Wayward and may have had something to do with Wayward's death.
In the poem “Dulce et decorum est” we are being told of the gas attack directly by Owen in the first person plural. It is an immensely vivid description that Owen describes to us and his message is hits the reader right between the eyes with its certitude. In the poem “Channel Firing”, however, Hardy uses two narrative voices. One is the voice of the dead who describe being awoken by the noise of the great guns, the other is God! IN this the message is more abstract because of the way Hardy jokes with us about the war and Gods views on it.
The poem's major theme seems to be this sense of the world being ruled by a hostile and blind fate, not by a benevolent God pushing all of the buttons. This is clearly stated within the poem itself as Hardy writes "If but some vengeful god would call to me / From up the sky, and laugh: 'Thou suffering thing, / Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, / That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!' / Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, / Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; / Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I / Had willed and meted me the tears I shed. / But not so." (Hardy, Longman p. 2255: ll. 1-9). As you can see, this poem shows that Hardy has indeed lost all faith in a benevolent God that deals out suffering and joy to his creations as he willfully deems they deserve and need. Instead of this idea of a benevolent God up above pulling all of the strings of the world and dealing out everyone's personal fate, Hardy believes fate is...
The Themes of Loss and Loneliness in Hardy's Poetry Introduction = == == == ==
...ses a regular “aabb” rhyme scheme in every stanza. The poet also heavily uses anapestic sounds whereby two stressed syllables are followed by a stressed syllable such as “You left us in tatters”. This gives the poem a song like rhythm. In addition, Hardy uses alliteration by repeating speech and consonants in a sequence such as 'you'd sign, and you'd sock;” (18), and “megrims or melancholy” (19). Also, the rhymes of the third and fourth lines are similar and at the end the third line in some stanzas, the poet hyphenates the last word such as prosperi-ty (3), compa-ny (11), la-dy (15) and melancho-ly) (19), in order to separate the final syllable that rhymes with the fourth line. The fourth sentence of every stanza ends with the word “she.” Finally, the poet matches the rhymes of the first and the last stanza as a way of creating balance or uniformity in the poem.
Clarke, R. (n.d.). The Poetry of Thomas Hardy. rlwclarke. Retrieved February 1, 2014, from http://www.rlwclarke.net/Courses/LITS2002/2008-2009/12AHardy'sPoetry.pdf
Hardy originated from a working class family. The son of a master mason, Hardy was slightly above that of his agricultural peers. Hardy’s examination of transition between classes is usually similar to that of D.H. Lawrence, that if you step outside your circle you will die. The ambitious lives of the characters within Hardy’s novels like Jude and Tess usually end fatally; as they attempt to break away from the constraints of their class, thus, depicting Hardy’s view upon the transition between classes. Hardy valued lower class morals and traditions, it is apparent through reading Tess that her struggles are evidently permeated through the social sufferings of the working class. A central theme running throughout Hardy’s novels is the decline of old families. It is said Hardy himself traced the Dorset Hardy’s lineage and found once they were of great i...
Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English author who considered himself mainly as a poet. A large part of his work was set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex. In 1898 Hardy published a collection of poems written over 30 years, Wessex Poems his first volume of poetry. Emma Lavinia Gifford, Hardy’s wife, whom he married in 1874. He became alienated from his wife, who died in 1912; her death had a traumatic effect on him. He remained preoccupied with his first wife's death and tried to overcome his sorrow by writing poetry, he dictated his final poem to his first wife on his deathbed.
Even after hearing the beautiful song of the bird, he still felt no hope. He wondered why the bird “had chosen thus to fling his soul” (23). According to Hardy there was “so little cause for carolings” (25). Although the bird was “some blessed hope, where of he knew”, Hardy still could not find meaning or optimism because he was still surrounded by “bleak twigs” (18) and “Winter’s dregs”. Everything around him has died and even the one glimpse of hope, the thrush, was weak and lean. This along with the conditions of the century caused the speaker to die inside.
“Hap” articulates Thomas Hardy’s denial of fate and the morality of actions in the face random chance. The lack of appeal or excuse is the true indicator of Hardy’s belief in personal responsibility for ones actions in a world ruled only by chance. Hardy’s extreme emphasis on acceptance and lack of excuse shows the need for personal moral responsibility for ones actions. This concept is readily seen not only in the Far From the Madding Crowd but also in many of his other narratives. In “Hap” Hardy makes an eloquent statement on the condition of the Victorian world and offers his opinions on how best to endure life in it.
“His loss of faith, his agnosticism and later pessimism about human freedom and human destiny, harmonize naturally with the movements of thought, belief predominant in his time.” (Douglas, 20) Scientific materialism shows the insignificance of the human individual in the scheme of the universe. Contrary to this doctrine is the Christian belief that every human soul is so precious in the eyes of God that he took the shape of man in the form of Christ to redeem mankind from its sins and sufferings. Hardy, being an artist and not a scientist, was placed in a very difficult position by the mechanistic conception of the universe.
Thomas Hardy was a famous author and poet he lived from 1840 to 1928. During his long life of 88 years he wrote fifteen novels and one thousand poems. He lived for the majority of his life near Dorchester. Hardy got many ideas for his stories while he was growing up. An example of this was that he knew of a lady who had had her blood turned by a convict’s corpse and he used this in the story ‘The Withered Arm’. The existence of witches and witchcraft was accepted in his lifetime and it was not unusual for several people to be killed for crimes of witchcraft every year.