Drummer Hodge Essay Example For Students

Drummer Hodge Essay Compare the poems Drummer Hodge and A wife in London by Thomas Hardy. You must comment on both subject matter and style. Drummer Hodge is an elegy for a Wessex drummer-boy who was killed during the Boer War. Thomas Hardy was already a famous novelist and poet, and was so touched by this story in his local Dorset newspaper that he decided to write the poem. Similarly, A Wife in London is also about the human cost of war, but unlike Drummer Hodge who is a soldier who dies abroad, A Wife in London is told from the perspective of the civilians who were left behind. Drummer Hodge gets its title from the common nickname for a West country labourer. However, Hardy was disapproving of the stereotype and believed that labourers were as unique and individual as any other people, and he used the word Hodge to name the drummer boy as a deliberate way of bringing respect to it. He achieves this by the end of the poem by making up for the absent burial service and some kind of ceremony with the tone of the last verse. From the harsh, callous tone of the first, and the absurdness that the second verse conveys, the third verse seems to restore some dignity with an almost prayer-like tone: And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally. (17-18) Its the word eternally that reminds us the most of a prayer or a hymn and you can almost hear the word Amen after it. We can tell how passionately Hardy disapproves of the Boer War too when in his very opening lines he describes the young drummer-boy being thrown into his grave without any burial ceremony: Uncoffined just as found (2) The harshness and total lack of dignity that these lines conjure up seems to be Hardys comment on what war reduces us to rather than death itself. The whole poem is his way of criticising how casually the lives of ordinary people were used up as cannon fodder by war. In the end, but only because Hardy has written about it in a poem, what starts out seeming like the worst possible ending to a life gets converted into something lasting. Drummer Hodge doesnt have a proper grave but he has a kopje-crest which is the crest of an outcrop of rock in the middle of the open veldt. Hardy makes this sound like a natural headstone marking the drummer-boys grave. At first his use of Boer words to describe the scene in verse two make it seem even more wrong that this young Wessex boy, who would never have been abroad before, is buried in a place he wouldnt even have understood. But by the end a portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge for ever be which Hardy has a way of making us feel is just as dignified and lasting as any monument in a graveyard. In this way, the structure of the poem in three sections is ideal because it is like the beginning, middle and end of a story which I think people would have been able to relate to easily. A poem like Drummer Hodge would probably have made it more bearable for all the people who wanted to bury their soldiers properly but couldnt, and had to live with the thought of them lying in the ground somewhere abroad. A Wife in London is a war poem about the other casualties the ones that stay behind at home. Its about a woman who gets the worst possible news that her husband has died in action, which is bad enough. But Hardy has structured the poem in two halves so that he can extend the story to the next day. .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8 , .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8 .postImageUrl , .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8 , .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8:hover , .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8:visited , .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8:active { border:0!important; } .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8:active , .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8 .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u7536de0ad310ca2cc6eebd237a67eaa8:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Unseen Poetry Argumentative EssayJust as were wondering why because it seems the main point of the poem has already been made, Hardy uses a cruel twist of fate where she gets a letter from her husband after she knows he is already dead which is like a double blow. Its particularly cruel because its Page-full of his hoped return (17) and we realise that the real message isnt about the shock of a soldier dying, its about the pure waste of a life and two futures that the war has caused. Hardy builds up a foreboding atmosphere right from the start with classic almost film-like imagery of a thick London fog and dark, dismal streets. The Tawney vapour conveys a gloomy mood and even the glimmer of the street lamps is cold. Its as if the wife is breathing the same smoke and fumes of the battlefield as her husband. Then the tension builds dramatically with the messengers knock at the door the sound that everyone in wartime would have dreaded and even though the telegram is short and sharp, the shock is so great Of meaning it dazes to understand (8). The imagery at the start of the second half of the poem gets even uglier as death is described in detail: His hand, whom the worm now knows. (15) I think both poems are equally successful in their different way at getting across Hardys main message that war is a terrible waste of life, but I think Drummer Hodge is more important because it must have been worse for the men living and dying at the sharp end than for anybody they left behind. However, I dont like poetry as a medium because it is too condensed. Because it has to be a limited piece of work it has to become almost like a code that needs footnotes and explanations to understand it. Obviously there hasnt always been a visual way like newsreels of getting things across, and in lots of other ways poetry is useful, but for a huge and complex subject like war, I think poetry isnt the best medium. 987 Words. G. C. S. E English Coursework Courtney Bishop.