Hope in Death: Thomas Hardy

Writers probably always wonder what people will think of them after they pass from the world. Thomas Hardy especially, with his “strangely bifurcated literary career” (1071), must have wondered which of his writings people would remember, or even if they would remember at all. Hardy’s “Afterwards” explores this concept, as it is spoken from the point of view of a man obsessed with his own death, but concerned mostly with what people will say of him.

The most interesting part of this poem to me is the characterization of those left wondering and thinking about the speaker when he dies. Some are just “the neighbors” (line 3), one is nothing more than “a gazer” (line 7), and none are mentioned to be any close relation to the speaker. These are not family members and close friends, then, or even ardent admirers of the man who remember that “‘He was a man who used to notice such things’” (line 4); instead, they are those whom he hardly knows. This speaker, perhaps Hardy himself, cares about influencing those who will never know him well. As a writer who achieved great fame during his lifetime, Hrady influenced lots of people whom he would never meet; if his speaker in “Afterwards” is in fact himself, perhaps the poem shows a concern with how well his words will last after his passing: not to his family or friends, who will of course always remember him, but to all the others.

The speaker does not seem to fear death. Hardy writes of no grim, grisly, evil Reaper; he does not characterize death as a monster. Instead, “the Present . . . [latches] its postern behind [his] tremulous stay,” gently but firmly bidding him good-bye from the world (line 1). Many would fear dying, especially alone or at night, but Hardy only describes that fateful night as “mothy and warm, / When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,” giving it an air of comfort and familiarity rather than the alienating effect often ascribed to death (lines 9-10). In fact, he even has hope in his death; describing the church bell ringing upon his death, he says that “a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings, / Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s bloom” (lines 18-19). The very bells that announce the tragedy of a man’s passing, then, can provide hope as they “rise again.” Even when the bells themselves stop, the people remain: the neighbors, acquaintances, and admirers who remark that “‘He hears it not now, but used to notice such things” (line 20).