Summary Of Neutral Tones By Thomas Hardy English Literature Essay

Summary Of Neutral Tones By Thomas Hardy English Literature EssayThe loud speaker system addresses an estranged spotr and reminisces about a foreseen moment in their past, from where he already anticipates the demise of their relationship. The first three stanzas (lines 1-12) describe the past incident when the speaker faces the bleak moments of a break up process. The speaker is mentally perturbed by the disillusions of passionateness, believing that things were once beautiful. He is frustrated when love perishes and felt deceived by the sweet-flavored promises love had to offer.It started off with cold winter where the speaker stood by a pond with his lover and everything was neutral in colour with sombre effects of whites and greys to try the sense of hopelessness and death in all living things. The tension gradually picks up in the second stanza where the speaker explores deeper into the nature of their relationship Your eye on me were as eyes that rove over tedious riddles solved years ago., which is interpreted to mean that the couple had repeated fights with no progress in their relationship. The insignificance of their communication exposed through the tired and morbid under relish seen in lines such as And some words played between us to and fro-. This shows thoroughgoing flaws in their communication, making a meaningful relationship seem impossible. The first line of the third stanza describing her smile contains a disheartening oxymoron. Usually, a facial apparent movement would be associated with happiness and joy where as in Neutral Tones the smile is described as the deadest thing. The cold causality of the gesture serves as reminder to the acrimony of the poem. This oxymoronic metaphor continues, with the phrase alive enough to have the strength to die. This phrase further enhances the emotional turmoil experienced by the speaker, presenting a horrifying substitution class of something that just has enough energy to die. Based from this line, the speaker had already known that his lover would deceive him in love just as her smile that defeats the place of joy and happiness. Lastly, the fourth stanza reflects upon the memories of the past incident and explains on the nature of love. It is a sad, pessimistic and melancholic poem that portrays love as paroxysmful and never abiding till it is fragilely doomed.What meanings do you find in the title?The poet tells on the termination of a relationship creates its melancholic note in the title itself, called Neutral Tones. Ironically, the act upon of landscape are neutral but the lovers features, as in her eyes and smile, may seemed neutral but they are in fact bitter and hurtful. passim the poem, a variety of techniques are used to highlight sadness and emotions in the speaker with soothing yet depressing language that consorts on duality. Neutrality effects from the poem may seem calm and soothing, yet it contradicts to the real meaning of the background, which a ctually depicts hopelessness and disillusionments about love.Explain in your own words the metaphor in line 2.In line 2, Hardy uses a very neutral monosyllabic word like the sunlight was white, as though chidden of God. The sun that normally appears to be yellow, symbolizes happiness and life. But in Neutral Tones, as the title suggests that all living things and nature becomes sombre in colour, which in this context the sun becomes white to create the feelings of frigidity as soundly as to symbolize the coldness of the relationship within the poem. The speaker once thought that love would be a happy and lively feeling of joy, instead of having a tragic ending of coldness towards the relationship. Sadly, even a possible hope of love has been chidden of God as if it is cursed and forbidden.What connotations appropriate to this poem does the ash (line 4) have that oak tree or maple would lack?The ash carries a double meaning, where as oak and maple merely mean a type of tree. Unlike the maple and oak, ash could also means a grey powdery substance that is left after something is burn besides having another meaning as a type of tree. In other words, Hardy uses ash to connote to the demise of the speakers relationship as well as the love that fades in time. Hardy creates a gloomy environment with a grey ash to emit the ambiance of a winter pacify where everything is neutral in colour. The few leaves, which have fallen from the ash gives hint towards the dying of life. Yet, it is not life that died, but love.What visible objects in the poem function symbolically? What actions or gestures?The setting contributes to a mood of torpor or constriction the sun is white, as if drained of all its vitality. Dead leaves lie on the ground as a reminder of the end of the natural cycle of life and death. These leaves are grey and come from an ash Both words honour the gloominess of this colorless, inert scene. Essentially, Hardy creates a dying environment to symbolize a pe rishing relationship. In addition to serving as an objective correlative, the bleak valet Hardy describes in Neutral Tones also symbolizes the speakers dead relationship. Through his use of imagery, construction of the poem, and paradoxes, Hardy creates a bleak world of once-beautiful things lying in despair, which invokes a sense of hopelessness and melancholia in the reader.The description of the womans glance and their conversation suggests that their love had become boring and meaningless to her. Things become even direr in stanza 3, when the lovers smile is likened-in a metaphor instead of the simile of stanza 2-to the deadest thing/ Alive, and her bitter grin is compared to an ominous bird awing. use of symbolism is the ominous bird a-wing, this could have been point in as a kind of prolepsis to the final stanza, the ominous bird representing his know shattered trust, the word ominous almost suggest something paganistic about this. The pain predicted by this bitter grin is c onfirmed in stanza 4 the death of their relationship, but even more pain and suffering followed in the deceptions and wrongs that ensued. The vagueness and generalized tone of this last stanza implies that the assertion that love deceives, / and wrings with wrongs is a generalization that applies to all love, not just this particular love.