All three authors, Hardy, Housman, and Thomas, wrote about God not existing or not caring and
death. All three had troubling lives and
it showed in their poetry. I am going to
focus on Hardy for this entry. One poem
in particular caught my attention because this is a fear that a lot of people
share, if it is interpreted as I interpret it.
"Neutral Tones" is about a woman who has long since stopped
loving her husband and is grinning bitterly as she remembers how her smile
trapped her man who she used to love. She
roves over the tedious riddle of how her life came to be such a cliché. This whole while, the man is still madly in
love with the woman and is still smitten with her smile, but when he notices
the bitterness in her grin he realizes that his love has blinded him to the
truth of her indifference to him now. He
has awakened from his love-struck stupor and realizes that it is plain to see
in her face and the dead gray winter scene before him that his wife is
completely neutral to him and thus he shall be now. No one wants their marriage to fail and wants
their spouse to be their one true love, but oft that is not the case as the
growing divorce rate will tell you.
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