What have you found interesting about the way Hardy presents his view of life

The period that Hardy had grown up in had affects on his life thus this affects his writing. The political era he had been bought up in had effects as William Gladstone was Prime Minister at the time Hardy wrote his first novel at the age of twenty-six. The World War had been a significant part of his life thus altering his views of the world. The way his poems are written gives us the impression that his own life and own experiences are involved in his style of writing.

He was born into a creative family, which would later have an effect on him. His father enjoyed playing the Violin which he often enjoyed playing wit Thomas Hardy at a young age. His mother passed on her love of reading, Hardy wrote his first novel in 1870.

In Hardy’s poems he expresses his attitude towards as life (being mainly negative), especially in the poem ‘Shut out that moon’. The poem has a very negative view towards life, he believed that life promised so much at the beginning however his view turned bad and bitter.

The view of life has overall been pessimistic and Hardy expresses this through the negative language used in his poems and early novels. In the poem ‘The Division’ Hardy uses archaic words, which sows the poem was written in the late 1800’s.

Hardy’s poems are mostly in structured stanza’s mostly consisting of four to five lines. Also most of Hardy’s poems are bitter and miserable, his poems are all generally in a sequence of progression of thought as he begins explaining and then mostly ending with a negative stanza mainly consisting of a concluding thought and an obvious change in his mood. From the first stanza the poems Hardy writes are disheartening and the poem almost always ends on a negative note.

The Poems are all mainly down, he writes a lot about the way people have affected his life such as his parents, his sister, women he had been having relationships with and mainly his wife Emma. The poem ‘He never expected much’ was written by himself for on his eighty-sixth birthday, the poem gives a very pessimistic view of what he believed Hardy’s view of life had not been fulfilled, he was talking to the world and explaining why he had not felt that the life had been fair on him. People had explained to him and had given him many examples however he had failed to listen and as a result he had felt a lot of pain. He felt the world had been evil and people had deceived him until their death, he had also felt that he had not been told what life had been like. The poem ‘A Necessitarian’s Epitaph’ also has very negative view of what Hardy believed life had been like for him, the poem gives a very deterministic view, it shows that Hardy had felt pain and again his view of the world had not been pleasant. He is explaining what he would like to have written on his tombstone, so evidently it is pessimistic.

Almost all of Hardy’s poems are very descriptive he uses a lot of metaphors e.g. creaking, referring to himself as old. There is a lot repetition in his poem thus meaning he emphasises certain points.

Around the time that Hardy’s first wife Emma Hardy died in 1912, many of Hardy’s poems .e.g. ‘The Going’ and ‘The Voice’ had been written about her, mainly giving the impression that he felt saddened about the way he had treated her.

In conclusion Hardy presents his views of life in a very down and gloomy way, especially since the death of Emma and his sister perhaps due to the guilt he felt about the way he treated her. Also he felt that life had betrayed him, and it had not fulfilled the expectations he had of it.