Synopsis of Thomas Hardy’s Channel Firing and The Dead Man Walking
The Victorian Era was the age of disillusionment and doubt. The 1910s political climate was that of collective anxiousness. European Imperialism had increased tensions among the colonies and their colonisers that took over their lands by force. The literature of this time is unique in the sense that we saw a sort of activism through writing. Thomas hardy, a novelist and poet of the time, was a Victorian realist writer who often through his writings spoke out against the socioeconomic disparity, war and violence.
Hardy once said “ Fear is the mother of foresight” and he was most certainly right because his 1914 poem Channel firing is prophetic in nature. Written a few months before the Great war that would break out, the poem expresses the futility and absurdity of war; and Hardy’s own views of the time.
The poem opens with the loud firing of weaponry that shook the coffins and broke the lead sealed church windows. We now know that the poem is set in a church graveyard, establishing the dark and macabre tone for the rest of the verses. Thomas hardy lived in the small town of Dorset off the southern coast of Britain. This town which is right by the English Channel and Dover Strait where they would practice gunnery. The sheer blasts of firearms reverberated across the land and shook the dead awake who presumed it to be the Day of Reckoning. Judgement Day, when humanity would be condemned for all their sins. Along with the dead we see distress brought to the poor and innocent, who here are- the howling hounds, the church mice and the cemetery worms that retreat into their mounds with fear. Hardy goes on to make the bold choice of having the character of God voice his opinions. Speaking to clear up the misconceptions and quite down the commotion, God assures the bewildered dead that it is not yet Judgement day and remarks on it is just humans being their ignorant selves.
“The world is as it used to be”. The lust for power and control is something the history of mankind is quite familiar with. “All nations striving to make red war, yet redder.” In these lines ‘red war’ alludes to the book of Revelations. Allegorical of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, mainly the one on the red horse War who rides along with Conquest, Famine and Plague. Relentlessly striving for violence in the name of religion, God says they do as much for Christ as the dead, which is none but at least does not have the privilege of choice. Hardy envisions a cynical God, one who rather mockingly says that most people should find themselves lucky because if it were Judgement day, they would be scrubbing the floors of Hell.
With this, the dead lay back down in their coffins. They talk among themselves, wondering if we would ever change. A priest finds himself wishing he had not led the pious lifestyle that he had and perhaps should have enjoyed himself more because in the end they all lay in the same dirt. The sounds of war echo through all of space and time, all the way back to the Stourton Tower, Camelot and the Stonehenge (all these places in Wessex with history of battle). A sound known too well by all of mankind.
The Victorian Era is characterised by its loss of faith. With Darwin’s Origin of Species, new discoveries being made, science and religion found themselves in conflict with one another. For centuries people have indulged in wrongful acts, misdeeds in the name of religion. This poem of deep pessimism and its sardonic nature captures the Victorian clime of hopelessness.
“My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own”
This quote by Thomas Hardy is something that resonates with us all. The greatest works of art are those that can with stand the test of time, can find an interested audience years after being created. The subject of this poem is about a place in southern Britain, most of us cannot relate to that. The themes of death, destruction, loss of hope however does resonate with us. Like said in the poem the world is still the same and will continue to be so unless we consciously strive to learn from our past.
Dead Man Walking is Thomas Hardy’s 1890 lyric poem of psychological realism. It comprises of ten quatrains with end rhymes for lines two and four. The poem opens with a paradox, the title itself is a paradox! Dead men do not walk and one cannot be both living and dead.
With the help of metaphors, the speaker tells us he is but a hollow shape, a pulseless mould, a screen that masks his ‘cold ashes’, suggesting that it has been a while since he has been dead. He tries to pinpoint exactly when, but fails to do so. He was not given a minute’s warning nor an hour, the charms and joys of time simply ceased over time.
“For me ceased Time’s enchantments in hall and bower”
Time was not kind to him, he suffered in the public eye (hall) and had marital problems (bower). He goes on to say that it was a death without tragedy, there was no last breath taken. It was the slow silent march of time leading to his demise.
He recollects and enumerates that led to his death. He reminisces his youth, a time where he was full of passion for life. He sang songs to the rhythm of his heart that fueled his flame of passion and will to thrive. Hardy juxtaposes the heat of his youth with the iciness that engulfs him now. In his pursuit of the meaning of life he realised that man has always has selfish intentions. He lost his faith in life and slowly began to crumble. From there on he only took more blows to his already weakened heart. He found himself isolated and alienated from the rest of the world after losing his friend and his family. Another part of him dies when his marriage was failing and his wife lost feelings for him.
He no longer feels like a person and refers to himself as if he were an inanimate object, a ‘corpse-thing’
“and if when I died fully
I cannot say
And changed into the corpse-thing
I am to-day”
The metaphorical death of the poem’s speaker shows us that existing and living are two entirely different things though he may be living mechanically, he no longer has a zest for life. Painful circumstances stacking on one after the other lead to his slow decay.
Through Channel Firing we see the collective experience of the masses. The dead man Walking is the individual experience our speaker. This is what adds to his sense of isolation and alienation from the world of living. the poem expands on the idea of death and that it not just physical as it it presumed, but also emotional death.
