Pessimism In The Darkling Thrush

Birds have always been fascinating creatures to the imaginative impression of our creative entity. The moment man realizes the value of liberty in life and living, he grows desperate to cling to it. However, the more he tries to grab it in both hands the more it evades. Life on earth within a social decorum is so designed that the free flight of a mind finds it clipped. Down the ages, this consciousness only grows to make him feel his limitation and his inevitable lot of being restrained. On the verge of such realization, if in the free flight of a bird across the parti coloured sky his romantic longing or passion has been fed, the ‘hook’d feet’ or red claws have also been instrumental in expressing the spirit of cruelty and violence . Thenceforth, …show more content…
Unlike the skylark who is a ‘scorner of the ground’ or the nightingale whose presence is only felt, the thrush is more mundane and close to the ground. The Victorian poets (writers) are more socially conscious and alive to the complexities of life, with an awareness of social responsibility, a feature distinctly absent in the Romantics. Hence, Hardy’s The Darkling Thrush presents a gloomy, pessimistic and worn out world in the first two stanzas with artistic fidelity to reality. The ‘broken lyre’ is symbolic of the absence of harmony in life and suggestive of the discordant music of life that runs through Victorian ethos. The result is the assertion of the poet to find ‘everything as fervourless as I’. Indeed, Victorian society suffers from this lackluster vitality and a sense of disbelief and doubt engulfs everything and everyone. The sequence of epithets used to picturize the physicality of the thrush is well in tune with the spirit of the …show more content…
They always want to sit on the top of the social hierarchy and govern the world of their own accord. Their desire is to hold the whole creation under their control and thus be the lord and commander of this world. When the hawk claims ‘it’s all mine’ with aggression and atrocity the famous line of Louis xiv la etat cest moi, which is “I am the state” rings out unmistakably. History of human civilization is replete with many such historical characters who have proved themselves to be the image of death. Common and innocent people have been the victims of their lust. The more they satisfy their lust by exercising their power, the more they become blood