No Buyers: A Street Scene Flashcards
“A load of brushes and baskets and cradles and chairs
Labours along the street in the rain:”
“load” “labours” - alliteration, emphasis, heavy sounding words, exhaustion, sense of futility (pointless) that the objects are pointless and not exciting to sell
“brushes and baskets” “cradles and chairs” - alliteration, speeds up, like a long boring list
“cradle” - like a baby with new life and optimism, contrast with sense of futility
“rain:” - emphasis placed on this negative image by colon
“whiteybrown hairs” “shambling sway”
“whiteybrown hairs” - vivid, painterly detail, contrast with grey image of rain
“shambling sway” - more rhythm, sense of freedom
“At a slower tread than a funeral train,
While to a dirge-like tune he chants his wares,
Swinging a Turk’s-head brush (in a drum-major’s way
When the bandsmen march and play).”
“funeral” - links to “dirge-like tune” - sad song, melancholy, sad, gloomy, exhaustion
“chants” - the song is not being sung, only ‘chanted’ which also suggests that there is a lack of melody, and therefore a lack of pleasantness about the song and the atmosphere
“Swinging” - more positive image
“(in a drum-major’s way When the bandsmen march and play).” - couplet rhyme, quickens, more jaunty
“A yard from the back of the man is the whiteybrown pony’s nose:
He mirrors his master in every item of pace and pose:
He stops when the man stops, without being told,
And seems to be eased by a pause; too plainly he’s old,”
“nose” “pose” and “told” “old” - bathos (undercutting of empathy), couplet rhymes, comic, childish
Last three lines - shows how even the horse has given up, resignation, futility
“disjointed waggon”
“wriggles” “rambling” “warp” ““weight” “pushing”
“disjointed waggon” - vivid detail, broken
“wriggles” “rambling” “warp” “weight” pushing” - verbs show difficultly for the horse
What else can you say about the second stanza?
In the second stanza, Hardy describes how the pony is not physically strong enough to ‘steer the disjointed wagon straight’ so as a consequence, the wagon ‘wiggles left and right in a/ rambling line.’
In the last line of the stanza, Hardy also writes that it is the wagon that is ‘pushing the pony’ instead of the pony pulling the wagon along the street (the plosive alliteration of the ‘P’ also emphasises the effort needed by the wagon to move the pony along as it is so ‘old.’).
The language Hardy has used in this stanza is particularly effective as it suggests that it is in fact the wagon which owns the man, wife and their pony and which determines their path and movements, not vice versa.
The poem shows that it is them who are enslaved to the wagon and the entire ‘load’ it carries, as they depend on the money from selling the items because otherwise they cannot survive.
“The woman walks on the pavement verge,
Parallel to the main:” (gap after these lines)
Hardy purposefully leaves a blank gap between the two lines to show the physical gap between the woman and her husband as they walk along the street, and perhaps also to convey to the reader their emotional distance from each other as well. Hardy at no moment in the poem makes it clear how the old couple feel about each other, however after reading these two lines of the poem it shows that the woman has perhaps lost all emotion and feelings she once felt for her husband, as the shortness of the line suggests that the words and emotions that once would have filled the space on the second line about him, no longer exist.
“She wears an apron white and wide in span,
And carries like Turk’s-head, but more in nursing-wise”
“apron” - associated with hard typically female labour
“white” - flash of bright, stands out, she hasn’t given up, or could show absence of colour and blankness and emptiness of their lives
“wide” - shows she is overweight or that the apron is second-hand as it doesn’t fit her, poor
“And carries like Turk’s-head, but more in nursing-wise” - this line from the third stanza seems to suggest that the woman is almost cradling the cleaning brush she is trying to sell, as if it were a child in her arms. Hardy includes this in the poem to generate sympathy for the woman, as she treats the objects she is trying to sell as her children, because she probably has not children or family of her own.
“Now and then she joins in his dirge,
But as if her thoughts were on distant things,
The rain clams her apron till it clings”
“Now and then” - resignation, not whole-hearted, she is giving up
“she joins in his dirge” - she, like him, has lost hope, mimics him and his melancholy, can’t help it, creates pathos
“as if her thoughts were on different things” - wishing for a different life but she can’t escape her own, further emphasises that she longs for a different and better life to the one she has now, possibly with a family and children
“clams” - sticks to her, she can’t help getting affected by melancholy scenes, “rain”, even though she tries to escape them in her head, negative line after hope of positivity, distinguishes optimism
“clings” - alliteration, onomatopoeia, unpleasant, uncomfortable
“So, step by step, they move with their merchandize,
And nobody buys”
“step by step” - sense of desperation, they have to carry on despite exhaustion
“they” - strong collective
“And” - addition, sounds like there will almost be hope
“nobody buys” - same as title, final line, reminds us of the overall message of poem, the futility of life
These last two lines suggest (like in previous lines in the second stanza of the poem,) that the man and his wife are dictated by the ‘merchandise’ they sell as they can only move forward in their lives by selling items. The use of enjambment between the two lines to fully isolate the line ‘And nobody buys’ is also effective as it accentuates the fact that actually nobody does buy the items they are selling, so the couple and their pony have to trek onwards in their miserable lives.
How is the futility of life embodied in this poem?
The futility of life is embodied throughout the poem, in the title and last line. The last line “nobody buys” undermines the whole project of the poem and makes it seem that all of what we have just read of their struggle of making it to the market was all pointless. So therefore, the futility of life is embodied through how their struggle and journey was pointless and how at the end of the day (or life), effort can amount to nothing. Raises the question about what is the point of life?
Personal response to poem? (say anything, I will just write something)
It makes me question what the point of life is, and I think we not only sympathise with the characters in the poem, but also empathise. Everyone has those days or moments in their lives when they think their efforts are pointless and they amount to nothing or we fail, so in a way, we can relate to them.
Structure point
In the poem, the reader is shown a small scene from the daily life of a man and his wife who walk aimlessly through dull and uninterested streets, trying to sell their ‘merchandise.’ The slow, sluggish rhythm of the poem and Hardy’s deliberate use of unnecessarily long words and overuse of conjunctions (such as: ‘A load of brushes and baskets and chairs’) which lengthen and prolong the poem, in a way, mirror the pace at which the elderly couple slowly walk the streets along with their ‘disjointed wagon’ and ‘whitey-brown hair[ed]’ pony.
