The Dead Man Walking by Thomas Hardy Poem animation - https://youtu.be/ZP1v54SeHY4?si=8iqQulDVmLnqtWpg 

Here's a virtual movie of a recital of an exquisite ,but despairing pessimistic poem by the great English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy "The Dead Man Walking".."The Dead Man Walking" is a lyric poem centering despair and pessimism. Being a lyric poem it presents the author's imaginative or emotional response to a person, a place, a thing, an event, or an idea,rather than telling a story. .The tone of the poem is gloomy. The speaker is in such deep despair that he compares himself to a dead man. One of the values of society in the 19th century was the image of perfection, even when underneath the mask, this was a foreign conception. Even to a lesser extent in today's society, it is expected that one try to make others believe that they are living the ideal, happy and carefree life that is desired by all. The poem, Dead Man Walking, deals most obviously with this theme in its morbid and grim expression of the way that life is chipping away at his sanity and soul. Hardy says that he is "A pulseless mould" and that he has "died yet more". These rather vivid and melancholic descriptions of the weathering aspect of life clearly portray the toll taken when one tries to create the facade of perfection. These lines of the poem are two of many examples throughout the poem of Hardy communicating the depth and profundity of the cost of maintaining this disguise of unhappiness. The use of a rhythmic technique here enhances this image of death and gloom. The rhythm is reminiscent of a grave sonorous boom of a tribal drum at a funeral precession. The mental imagery is full of murk, obscurity and dreariness. The emphatic diction, the engaging and imaginative techniques as well as the mental image that these two components of the poem produce, all collaborate to tell the truth behind Hardy's mask of perfection. Kind Regards Jim Clark All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2012