Lifeless Love In Neutral Tones And In The Orchard

Lifeless Love Some poets choose to take a more depressing and hopeless spin of a relationship. In “Neutral Tones” by Thomas Hardy and “In the Orchard” by Muriel Stuart, the authors write about dead love. They portray dead love through the out-of-sync characters that argue or don’t talk at all, colorless and moody landscape, and unsatisfying endings that leave readers with many questions. In “Neutral Tones” the characters seem exceedingly depressed and disconnected from each other. When the narrator describes his lover to the reader he says “The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing” (9). This line shows us that she is unhappy when around her lover. The Narrator then says “Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, / And wrings with

“Neutral Tones” takes place on a winter day as the narrator shows when he says “We stood by a pond that winter day,” (1). Winter is known as the season when nature becomes dead. This further shows the relationship between these two people is in a dead place. Hardy goes on to describe more of the scenery as “a few leaves lay on the starving sod; / -They had fallen from an ash, and were gray” (3-4) The use of the words starving convey that something is missing in the scene, something that the narrator misses to a desperate degree. The use of the words ash and grey give the leaves a colorless and dead aspect. Ash especially gives the setting a burnt out and ruined feel. The narrator reuses the color grey when he says “And a pond edged with grayish leaves.” (16) The author never uses color in the poem, only shading the setting in a grim grey, making the scene more lifeless. Everything in this scene is colorless and dead like the love between these two figures in the poem. It is the same in “In the Orchard”. As the boy says “‘Yes, its late. There’s thunder about, a drop of rain / Fell on my hand in the dark.’” (34-35) As he tells us, the poem takes place at night. This could be interpreted as them being at the night of their love. Dark and almost over. When the sun rises, the pair will be left with a new day which solubilizes finding a new love. There is also a storm coming. The poor weather represents the

Unsatisfying and wanting more. In “Neutral Tones” the narrator only tells about the current relationship between the unhappy couple. Details of what happen after this scene are left unknown to the reader. The writer never tells us if they find happiness or if they split up in the end. They start at the lifeless pond and end at the lifeless pond. The narrator never tells us if they ever move or if the season ever changes for them. The couple is forever trapped in the winter of their love. “In the Orchard” left numerous questions too. In the end of the poem, the girl says “‘You said you had something to tell me.’ ‘Yes, I know. / It wasn’t anything really…” (3f2-22) The reader never finds out what the girl wants to tell to the boy. The reader has to leave the poem without ever knowing. The author leaves the reader in the dark all the way to the last line when the girl says “‘Kiss me…’ ‘Goodnight.’…’Goodnight.’” The reader will never know what happened in that silence. He could have kissed her, moved away, or just stared at her. It is never known what happened between these