Nobody Comes - Hardy Flashcards
1
Q
What is nobody comes about?
A
- Describes a person sitting alone in a cottage, who is waiting for Florence Hardy to come home
- She had fallen ill, and needed to be taken into London (as there were no doctors)
2
Q
The death of the natural world
A
- Sun is described as ‘fainting light’ –> The sun is going down –> Physical weakness of the life which does not have the energy to remain upwards
- The Sun eventually “succumbs to the crawl of the night” –> Night personified, nature drained of life and energy as industrialisation begins to take place.
3
Q
Presents technology as evil?
A
- ‘Telegraph Wire’ should be an image of progress, globalisation, and connectedness —> Instead the Telegraph Wire is a ‘Spectral lyre’ —> Ghostly or ethereal musical instrument —> Telegraph represents an image of eerie dissociation
- ‘To the town’ -> invasion of rural England by modernity
4
Q
The Car
A
- when it comes up to harder, leaves a ‘blacker air’ —> Fumes from the exhaust are polluting the idyllic countryside, a sense of dirtiness now in the air following the industrialisation of Yorkshire
- The lamps of the car are “full glare” —> Glaring is an aggressive action, that emphasises the physical brutality of this car.
- The car then “flashes upon a tree” —> The light of car attacks nature
- The car has “nothing to do with him” and “whangs along in a world of its own” —> alienation -> Assonance mimetic of distance -> ‘whangs’ = modern verb and slightly odd
5
Q
Hardy’s reaction to everything going on
A
- Hardy remains “mute” after watching all of this occur → Enforces an oppressive silence onto Hardy, who’s watching his world being ‘destroyed’
- Hardy also stands by the “gate” whilst watching all of this occur —> Symbolic —> The Gate is a liminal space between one thing to another —> where the speaker remains going nor staying —> Speaker is trapped at this gate
- And ‘nobody pulls up there’ —> Lonely
6
Q
Structure?
A
2 Stanzas + Rhyme Scheme –> ABBCDCD
