Poetry Analysis of Thomas Hardy's ‘The Self-Unseeing’ and John Clare's ‘I Am’

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For my poetry analysis, I will be looking at the poem ‘The Self-Unseeing’ by Thomas Hardy and ‘I Am’ by John Clare. Both share quite a depressing theme, which I will be focusing on through different literary techniques. Hardy writes about missing his childhood, while Clare talks about looking forward to his death so he can return to a peaceful state. Both poems feature 3 stanzas and a similar rhyme scheme of ‘ABAB’.

Background

‘The Self-Unseeing’, a part of Hardy’s second volume of poems released in 1901, is a reminiscence of Hardy’s past, where he spent his childhood in a family home with his mother and father who have now passed away. The poem has a thematic message to remind the audience to not take what we have for granted. Throughout the entire poem, Hardy is seemingly revisiting his home from his youth, describing and comparing the present time to the past that he experienced with his parents. In doing so, the tone he uses is miserable and makes the reader feel as if he suffers from severe guilt and regret for not truly appreciating his youth.

Looking at the poem ‘I Am’ requires more context to coherently understand the theme and message behind it. ‘I Am’, written by John Clare during the mid-1840s, encompasses the time he spent at the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, where he stayed due to his suffering mental illness. During this time, he felt isolated from family and friends. It is apparent that Clare suffers from a lack of purpose in life, resulting in the desire for his life to end, so he can abide by whom he believes his “Creator, God”.

Analysis

In ‘The Self-Unseeing’, Thomas Hardy uses descriptive imagery to describe how his old home has aged and become worn down. He remembers that his parents used to walk through what he calls “the old door”, but are now not around to do so. Hardy speaks about who is believed to be his mother and father sitting around by the fire, while “he who plays” is bowing it higher and higher. He highlights that his mother was “smiling” into the fire, indicating that the period he is discussing was pleasant, strengthening his emotion towards his past being irretrievable, and regretting that he took it for granted. To convey that his father was playing a musical instrument the audience, he uses allusion, as not many readers will necessarily know what “bowing” means. Essentially, a bow is a stick used to move across a stringed instrument to create sound. In the last stanza, the author speaks about how he danced “childlike”, to the man bowing as if he was in a dream. He remembers how many blessings occurred on that day and how his life at that point was full of freedom, innocence, and that “everything glowed with a gleam” as he was happy and content. However, he believes that he stayed too content, as he states that “we were looking away”, meaning that none of them fully appreciated and cherished those moments together.

Now moving on to the poem ‘I Am’ by John Clare. The metric line that Clare uses in this poem is an iambic pentameter. This was intentionally done to coincide with the title ‘I am’ because it sounds like ‘iam’ in iambic. However, Clare didn’t use the iambic pentameter throughout the whole poem as in the first line, it’s broken up by a caesura after he states, “I am”. Considering that a break in the iambic pentameter only occurs once throughout this poem, Clare must have intended it to have a strong meaning. The way in which Claire expresses this phrase is quite confident. After the caesura, this confidence quickly dissipates as he states: “Yet what I am, no one cares or knows… my friends forsake me like a memory lost”. This use of alliteration is used to emphasize the provoking feeling of abandonment within Clare. He also states that he is the self-consumer of his woes. This is likely conveying that he finds comfort and satisfaction in times of self-pity. At the end of this first stanza and the beginning of the second, he uses an anaphora when he states that he lives “like vapours tossed” to connect and describe where his life has led to, which he believes is into nothingness. He later states that even those that he loves the most are distant from him, as he describes his life as a shipwreck without any sense of happiness or joy. He uses intangible words. In the final stanza, Clare intelligently uses sibilance to end the poem, as many words incorporating an S sound create a sense of peace, where he states he looks forward to abiding with his creator, God. The rhyme scheme changes from ‘ABAB’ to ‘ABABCC’ to further break the last stanza up from the rest of the poem, highlighting his longing for his death.

Conclusion

Both poems include many different literary techniques such as descriptive imagery, caesuras, anaphora, sibilance, and many more to convey a depressing theme. Both authors seemingly have had troubled lives, almost as if these poems were a cry for help.

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Poetry Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Self-Unseeing’ and John Clare’s ‘I Am’

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