Outside Reading!

The novel that I have chosen to explore is Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, and I'm not quite sure if I'm enjoying it or not yet. A part of me likes the novel, yet a different part of me dislikes it, mainly because I wonder if I will really finish it by October 12 since it's slow paced and one of the longer books on the list. For awhile I dreaded reading Far From the Madding Crowd since I'd heard it wasn't all that good, but after the first few chapters I began to really take hold of the plot and give understanding it a try. While just getting through this novel is a challenge, the even bigger feat is deciphering it. Since the diction is high ,and you constantly have to stop to find a definition of some unfamiliar word, but when you finish finding the word then usually you're out of your "reading zone" and don't feel like reading any longer, so you put the book down and think, "I'll come back in an hour." when really you don't come back at all. Also, while your reading you feel as if you've read for hours and have succeeded in reading a good portion of your book when you've only read maybe 30 pages or so; you're pretty dismal when you realize your slow progress and the amount of time that has passed.

The dominant literary element is a tough one to choose in this novel. There's quite a bit of imagery, however the tone is important also, so I'm still a bit between which to choose; I'm more towards the tone though. The imagery within Far From the Madding Crowd doesn't have much significance or meaning other than a description of a scene, person, or object, no symbolic meaning or relation to an important aspect of the novel. The tone seems to be deeper within the novel, but it is in fact there, hiding, waiting to be found.

In my opinion Thomas Hardy is using the tone to help compare the main character to later introduced characters, and show his social standing in comparison to theirs. Gabriel, the main character, comes off as a nobody and Hardy uses word choice to convey that message. Another thing is that the author seems a bit biased towards people who are lower in the social standings by implying that they aren't capable of keeping hold of what they have. The author wrote Gabriel as a character who is lower than all the other involved characters within the novel, and describes him as "just a shepard" and many variations of that. Gabriel is even lower than the women in the book and at the time that Far From the Madding Crowd is set men were believed to have more authority than the women. So far the tone has stayed the same and has not once shifted, but you never know when things within a book could change.