The analysis of the extract by Thomas Hardy

Hardy uses the 3^rd person narrator, who is mainly interested in providing the reader with a lot of details. These allows the reader to create a complete image of the scene, as if the narrator is a cameraman: moving the camera around the room and focusing people and items. The narrator just describes the scene in a very precise way, almost no judgments can be found.

As regards the main character Jude, he is carefully described. The scene of the hanging boys develops around his actions and he is the center of the final reflection. As a matter of fact Jude is more than a poor man getting in trouble with his family: he ends the scene with a philosophical and existential argument. He replies to his wife: “Nothing can be done. Things are as they are, and will be brought to their destined issue. It comes in the chorus of the Agamemnon. It has been in my mind continually since this happened.”