MB UNIUD

Questions about Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy

• Ø What has happened to the children?What is the meaning of the message left by the boy?

The children are dead, killed by the elder boy that, after killing his brothers has killed himself. Jude found a message on the boy's hand which says "Done because we are too menny". This means that little Jude was conscious of what he was doing. He did it because in the family they were too many and had economic problems.

• Ø How do Sue and Jude explain the tragedy?

The answer to this question is in lines 29-34. In these lines Hardy says that the Sue and Jude think that little Jude act in that way because he went into Sue's bedroom but he saw that she wasn't there and "was thrown into a fit of aggravated despondency that the events and information of the evening before had induced in his morbid temperament."

• Ø What do you think "the events and information of the evening before" are?

Probably the "events and information of the evening before" are something tragic that have traughted little Jude and that have made the boy do what he did. Probably someone told him about some economic problems. This would explain why he wrote in the message that they too many. Anothere conjecture that I can make, is that the evening before someone told little Jude that Sue was pregnant. My theory is argumentated by the words "[...]it was necessary to take care of herself (Sue) lest she should endanger a coming life".

• Ø What kind of narrator does Hardy use?

Hardy uses an extarnal omniscent narrator.

• Ø Where is the passage in the narrator's comment on the tragic event most explicit?

In my opinion the passage in the narrator's comment on the tragic event is most explicit in the last parte where he says "On that little shape had converged all the inauspiciousness and shadow which had darkened the first union of Jude".

• Ø What view of late Victorian society can you detect in Jude's attempt to comfort Sue?

Hardy criticizes Victorian society which was very contraddictive. In the discourse that Jude makes to Sue it emerges the contrast between apparence and what it really is. Jude says that the doctor is an advanced man, "but he can give no consolation to-". This means that during Victorian Age, society was progressing, but progress can't consolate people, who need a point of reference. Going further with the discourse Jude says that it was"the beginning of the coming universal wish not to live".

• Ø What do you think will happen to Jude and Sue?

Just considering the exctract I have just read, Jude the Obscure, seems a tragedy so I don't think that Sue and Jude will have the strenght to forget what has happened, their life will be ruined.The only nice thing that has happened in their lives now is gone. But Sue is pregnant so probably this means that thee have a second opportunity.