What is Channel Firing written by Thomas Hardy about?

Answer 1

"Channel Firing" is Thomas Hardy's way of saying that war is pointless. They've been around forever, but what has truly been accomplished by it? The narrator is a dead person awoke from its eternal sleep in its grave by cannons going off out at sea to practice firing just before WWI. At first the narrator believes it is God's Judgment Day. Then Hardy states that the mouse and the worm got scared by the roaring, but the glebe cow, or cow at a church used for keeping the grass short, just drools as if if understands too well what is going on thus the guns going off is expected. Then God tells the narrator that it is not Judgment Day, and that the noises are from gunnery practice at sea. He says the world is just like it used to be. God also tells the dead that those involved in the war don't do anything more than the dead people in their graves as far as forwarding his purposes. He says that most of the living are lucky it isn't Judgment Day because they'd all being sweeping the floors of Hell for their threats of War. Then one of the dead asks themselves if the world will ever understand what it's meant for, or if it will always be as confusing as when that dead person was alive. Another one of the dead persons is a preacher who says he wished he would've just smoked and drank instead of preaching. The final stanza mentions avenging, or getting revenge for, three things: 1) Stourton Tower, 2) Camelot, and 3) Stonehenge. 1) Sourton Tower is a tower where Alfred the Great resisted the invasion of the Danes 2) Camelot is the kingdom in the legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which means it shows how violence and war have become so ingrained into people lives that they've become part of fantasies and legends 3) Stonehenge, at the time this poem was written, April, 1914, was a great world mystery, and at the time wasknown to have been build by an ancient people. The essence of the poem is a criticism of War and of the endless human desire to have war and violence. Harding points out that though it occurs time and time again, and though it is incredibly devastation, people are too crazy to stop, and would always continue to make war though it displeases and doesn't honor God(s).