No Road

Question 1

“Since we agreed to let the road between us fall to disuse”

Answer 1

• Collectives : emphasises mutual agreement, breakup of relationship
• Negator : emphasises what the relationship once was, sense of abandonment created
• Prefix : sense of neglect provoked
• Enjambment creates separation of relationships

AO3 : Thomas Hardy literary influence
“Men and the lives of men, time and the passing of time, love and the fading of love” - Larkin about Hardy

Question 2

“And bricked our gates up, planted trees to screen us, and turned all time’s eroding agents loose”

Answer 2

• Anaphoric repetition / polysyndetic listing : elongates the sentence and creates a further separation
• Natural imagery : potentially emphasises the process as natural and instinctive - undermines the idea of relationships
• Lengthy processes : time is required to let relations heal
• As time progresses relationship will distort

Question 3

“Silence, and space, and strangers”

Answer 3

• Polysyndetic listing / sibillance : emphasises the lengthy process of healing
• Time is necessary for memories to heal
• Repeated conjunctions creates a further separation

Question 4

“Leaves drift unswept, perhaps; grass creeps unmown”

Answer 4

• Pastoral imagery and motif of abandonment : neglect, carelessness and abandonment
• Verbs used emphasise the slow process, natural process
• Sense of tranquility

Question 5

“So clear it stands, so little overgrown”

Answer 5

• Anaphoric Repetition : time is presented as an unstoppable force
• Not enough time

Question 6

“Walking that way tonight would not seem strange”

Answer 6

• Sense of familiarity and comfort
• Not enough time has gone past to deteriorate relations
• Conflict within the poem

Question 7

“And still wouldn’t be allowed. A little longer and time would be the stronger”

Answer 7

• Personification : time is personified to emphasise its omniscience and power
• Modal verbs : potential for change, seen as a possibility

Question 8

“Drafting a world where no such road will run from you to me”

Answer 8

• Structural parallel to the beginning of the poem, previously in unison of “we” now creates a physical separation emphasising the deterioration of the relationship, loss of feelings
• Implication of barrier between the two, isolation and detachment

Question 9

“Like a cold sun”

Answer 9

• Simile and oxymoron : emphasises the separation. Unnatural and uncanny,
• Shows the difficulty of separation, something of comfort now symbolises discomfort
  AO3 : Neutral Tones, Thomas Hardy

Question 10

“Rewarding others, is my liberty.”

Answer 10

• Endstop creates a sense of finality and definitive
• Gives both parties freedom
• Possessive pronoun emphasises a sense of loneliness

Question 11

“Not to prevent it is my will’s fulfillment. Willing it, my ailment”

Answer 11

• Rhyming couplets of half-rhyme : emphasises a bittersweet ending
• Separation necessary but upsetting
• Gives a sense of certainty through the full stop through acceptance

Question 12

STRUCTURE

Answer 12

• Sestets through ABABCC structure emphasises the inevitability of time that is permanent through its rigidity
• Consistent stanza length

Question 13

CONTEXT

Answer 13

• Ruth Bowmen called engagement off in 1951
• “Tormented by remorse if we marry I should spend my life mentally kicking myself”
• Thomas Hardy : “His subjects are men, the life of men, time and the passing of time and love and thr fading of love”