A Critical Analysis Of Wordsworth's The Torn

Wordsworth’s “The Thorn” starts off similar to an old horror film, beginning with a close-up of a thorn and then moving into a wider shot of it, a mountain, a mossy hill, and finally a woman in a scarlet cloak. But soon after, the lost and sorrowful beauty of atmosphere and setting that Wordsworth creates is explained through the tale of a sad, rejected woman, Martha Ray, whose baby has died and the stories, as a result, which build around her. Wordsworth introduces the thorn in the opening stanzas describing it negatively as, “A wretched thing forlorn,” and further personifies it by associating it with innocence and youth by stating it is, “Not higher than a two year’s child.” This description of the thorn directly connects the dead infant and the Hawthorn tree which grows over its grave. He foreshadows the death of a child using nature imagery. Wordsworth manages to mix his usual natural scenery into this poem to create its very essence by setting the reader to up to respond emotionally to nature.

Wordsworth tips the scale back and forth by mixing factual information like the thorn’s location and small details like what’s near the thorn and exactly how tall it is with the emotional story the poem goes on to explain. He uses color deliberately in this part of the poem when he describes the mound of earth near the thorn and then introduces, “A woman in a scarlet cloak,” and asks the readers, “Now wherefore, thus, by day and night, / Does this poor woman go?” The question that every villager ponders and now, the reader. Their random observations and imaginations run wild from gossiping whispers and create myths. Many believe Martha went insane and murdered her baby after her fiancé left her at the altar and buried it next to the...

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...ght”, have not learned anything. They remain unwilling to respond to the situation in any realistic way since they fail to accuse Martha Ray and even simply ask her what happened. However, the speaker notes about Martha Ray, “That in her womb the infant wrought/About its mother’s heart, and brought,/Her senses back again:/And when at last her time drew near,/Her looks were calm, her senses clear.” Therefore, the realization that she was carrying life seemed to save her from her despair. She didn’t need anyone else’s approval or love but her child’s. That is what connects Martha Ray and her child back to the thorn and the hill. She wanted her child more than anything, but it passed away and she buried it on that mountain, creating that hill. She was newly distraught over the death of her second chance, and her sorrow grew the same as the thorn grew out of the hill.