Guidelines

• Your essay should feature a clear, arguable thesis in the introduction.
• Use specific textual evidence (diction, imagery, tone, and form) from both sections of the poem to bolster your argument.
• Explore how the fog and darkness imagery in Part I contrasts with the tone of Part II and what this reveals about the wife's emotional journey.
• Examine the role of dramatic irony — such as the letter arriving after the telegram — and what Hardy suggests about fate, war, and human suffering.
• Conclude by linking Hardy's critique to a broader universal theme regarding loss, communication, and the emotional distance between people during conflicts.

Write a well-organized essay in which you argue how Hardy employs structural contrast, irony, and imagery to illustrate the theme that modern life — represented by the fog-covered city — is indifferent to human suffering.

In your essay, make sure to:

• Analyze the importance of the poem's two-part structure and how the shift between sections intensifies the main tragedy.
• Examine Hardy's use of dramatic irony — particularly, how the timing of the two letters creates a painful disconnect between what the wife knows and what the reader understands.
• Discuss how Hardy's imagery of London fog and darkness serves as a pathetic fallacy, mirroring both the wife's emotional state and a wider sense of Victorian pessimism.
• Support your argument with close textual evidence from the poem.

Assessment focus

Argumentation, close reading, use of literary devices