Comment 1 of 1, added on October 17th, 2005 at 4:05 PM.
This is yet to be handed in for marking and will probable be torn appart by my tutor. I would be interested to hear any comments from other Lit Lovers.
Written shortly after the death of his wife, Emma, “The Going” is a poem of regret and self pity containing many rhetorical questions that can only be answered by his, now dead wife.
The first stanza has Hardy asking Emma why she has left him so suddenly almost without any care ‘as if indifferent quite’. It is almost as if she was glad to leave him and didn’t want to make a fuss, dying ‘calmly’.
In the second stanza Hardy tries to express to Emma how much her passing has affected him. That Emma has left Hardy without giving him the chance to tell her how much he cares ‘Never to bid good-bye’ shows how much he regrets not having expressed his feelings before her death. In the final two lines of this stanza Hardy emphasizes the impact ‘great going….altered all’ has had on him. His life will never be the same again.
The theme of self pity is integrated into the third stanza where Hardy, angry and accusing asks Emma why she made him ‘leave the house’, for a moment, thinking he had seen her in a familiar place. Although this was just a fleeting moment, the thought that he may have the chance to see her once again combined with the realization that this could not be the case, left Hardy sickened.
The next two stanzas are full of remembrance and regret. Hardy thinks back to the days when their love was joyful and life was at its “very best”. Realizing this, Hardy wishes they had made the most of the years gone by. They could have rekindled their long lost courtship together visiting places they had been to whilst in their youth.
Moving from the use of the personal ‘I’ in the fifth stanza that is so often used when grieving i.e. “I wish I had told her that I loved her”, Hardy, in his use of the personal pronoun ‘we’, almost seems to apportion blame on Emma herself for both their failing relationship and indeed for her very death
In the final stanza Hardy acknowledges that he can do nothing to change the past, his missed opportunity to revive their marriage or the death of Emma with “I seem but a dead man…To sink down soon”. He feels his life will not go on without her yet he finishes the final stanza, blaming her for the pain that he feels; he would do to no other what she has done to him “not even I would undo me so”
The poem invokes the reader’s empathy and is easy to read. He expresses his regret and sorrow at Emma’s death as if he were asking her for forgiveness for not doing things differently whist he had had the chance. However one cannot help but question whether Hardy is full of self pity or grief. In conclusion the reader is left to question whether Hardy is nostalgic for what was, and could have been, or is he full of self pity for what is now, wholly irrevocable.
Simon Ferrer from
United Kingdom
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This is yet to be handed in for marking and will probable be torn appart by my tutor. I would be interested to hear any comments from other Lit Lovers.
Written shortly after the death of his wife, Emma, “The Going” is a poem of regret and self pity containing many rhetorical questions that can only be answered by his, now dead wife.
The first stanza has Hardy asking Emma why she has left him so suddenly almost without any care ‘as if indifferent quite’. It is almost as if she was glad to leave him and didn’t want to make a fuss, dying ‘calmly’.
In the second stanza Hardy tries to express to Emma how much her passing has affected him. That Emma has left Hardy without giving him the chance to tell her how much he cares ‘Never to bid good-bye’ shows how much he regrets not having expressed his feelings before her death. In the final two lines of this stanza Hardy emphasizes the impact ‘great going….altered all’ has had on him. His life will never be the same again.
The theme of self pity is integrated into the third stanza where Hardy, angry and accusing asks Emma why she made him ‘leave the house’, for a moment, thinking he had seen her in a familiar place. Although this was just a fleeting moment, the thought that he may have the chance to see her once again combined with the realization that this could not be the case, left Hardy sickened.
The next two stanzas are full of remembrance and regret. Hardy thinks back to the days when their love was joyful and life was at its “very best”. Realizing this, Hardy wishes they had made the most of the years gone by. They could have rekindled their long lost courtship together visiting places they had been to whilst in their youth.
Moving from the use of the personal ‘I’ in the fifth stanza that is so often used when grieving i.e. “I wish I had told her that I loved her”, Hardy, in his use of the personal pronoun ‘we’, almost seems to apportion blame on Emma herself for both their failing relationship and indeed for her very death
In the final stanza Hardy acknowledges that he can do nothing to change the past, his missed opportunity to revive their marriage or the death of Emma with “I seem but a dead man…To sink down soon”. He feels his life will not go on without her yet he finishes the final stanza, blaming her for the pain that he feels; he would do to no other what she has done to him “not even I would undo me so”
The poem invokes the reader’s empathy and is easy to read. He expresses his regret and sorrow at Emma’s death as if he were asking her for forgiveness for not doing things differently whist he had had the chance. However one cannot help but question whether Hardy is full of self pity or grief. In conclusion the reader is left to question whether Hardy is nostalgic for what was, and could have been, or is he full of self pity for what is now, wholly irrevocable.
Simon Ferrer from United Kingdom