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The Return of the Native: significance of the Egdon Heath The Return of the Native is the story of Egdon Heath. The real stuff of tragedy in this book is the primitive primal instinctive heath. The great tragic power in this book originates from the heath. Against the backdrop of dark, passionate, massive wild enormous Egdon the lesser schemes of life are drawn. The hero and the heroine-Club and Eustacia- Mrs.
Yeobright and Wildeve are the typical products of Egdon. Like Sophocles, Shakespeare and Tolstoy, Hardy places human morality against the vast canvas of non human morality of nature or Egdon. Egdon is a protagonist of Return of the Native, said Walter Allen. It holds the character and action in the novel as though in the hollow of a hand. In its vastness it is indifferent to the human life upon it. Egdon is not bound by passage of time.
Egdon moulds the characters of the novel. It turns somebody to hate, somebody to love and anger and again someone to rebellion. It is their attitude to Egdon which ultimately determines the destiny of human characters. It greatly influences the principal characters in the story. Eustacia, the heroine of the novel being unable to reconcile her to heath feels a deep hatred for it. The loneliness of Egdon Heath makes her miserable and her protest against Egdon brings about her tragedy.
As the rustics are part of the heath and as they have reconciled themselves to the whims and changing moods of heath they hardly become tragic. Other characters of the novel react in the same way to the heath. Often their reactions serve as motivating force in the events which place in the novel. In other words the tragedy actually develops because of the characters attitude towards the heath. Furthermore the heath seems to reflect the moods of the characters through its appearance at a given time of day or season and through the weather. Since the heath is Hardy's symbol for nature or fate, the characters that revolt against it must be destroyed.
The characters that cannot come into terms with the heath are destroyed or met the tragic end. The basic theme of the novel is the constant war between man and his fate. Fate is a force which man never comprehends because he cannot understand its reason for actions. In Hardy's novel fate is symbolized by the heath- dark brooding, timeless and inscrutable. The significance of Egdon heath is evident in the very opening chapter of the novel. Hardy describes it as full of watchful intentness and as possessing a lonely face full of tragically possibilities, civilization was its enemy.
Through this passage we are made to feel the tragic doom which awaits the characters of the novel with the heath or fate ready to pounce upon them at the first opportunity Egdon heath symbolizes the inscrutability of fate. It has no sympathy for human beings and their hopes and desires. It destroys them through a move which appears to have no reason behind it. The heath is a place where paganism and witchcraft flourish and church going is rare, constitutes a kind of moral wilderness when the standards of values and behaviour observed by the major characters have to be imported from elsewhere.
In the ensuring confrontation with the realities of the world of Egdon heath, it is mostly the alien values which are surrendered. Wildeve, Eustacia and Mrs Yeobright all raise moral issues to themselves or to others only to contrivance almost immediately the standards of what they know to be sensible humane and right. Walter Allen has justly remembered that Egdon heath is not just a scenic backcloth to the action, it is all pervasive; without it the novel would be unimaginable.
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Research essay sample on The Return Of Native Significance Egdon Heath
