The Darkling Thrush Analysis

Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our...

For a guy who's all about apocalypse and ending the earth, Thomas Hardy sure plays it safe when in comes to form. After all, with all that chaos and nothingness out there, it just doesn't make much...

Our speaker has a very active imagination. He uses elaborate turns of phrase and whimsical references to things like the seasons and feelings as if they're honest-to-goodness people. Which is lucky...

If you've seen Fargo, you know just how quiet and desolate all of those quiet frozen Nowheres are in this world. You know, the kind that don't even make it onto the map. That's where Hardy's speake...

This poem sounds a little like that dude that sits in the corner of a bar at 10:30 on a Tuesday morning moaning to himself. Either that, or he's the odd guy on the street corner reminding you that...

Hold on a second. "Darkling" isn't a word, is it? No, no it's not. (OK, we're fudging here. A loooooong time ago, way before the poem was written, "darkling" was sometimes used to mean "a creatur...

Animism. Or, "It's alive. IT'S ALIVE!!"Hardy develops complex (and often deeply personal) symbolic systems that deal almost exclusively with the natural world. Notice how we get up close and person...

(4) Base CampTechnically speaking, "The Darkling Thrush" isn't too challenging. Hardy relies on dense imagery and occasional metaphoric language to drive his gloomy-with-a-tiny-bit-of-happy-at-the-...

Hardy taught himself to read (source).After critics reacted with shock and horror to the "immorality" of Hardy's last few novels (especially Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure), Hardy g...

GNo sex. Not anywhere. All death and sadness.…unless, of course, you think that the "germ and birth" was once fertile. Don't get us wrong: Hardy doesn't shy away from scandalous sex scenes. Check...