In Memoriam
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How does the speaker regard nature at various points in the poem? Where
is his view of nature at its bleakest? Provide evidence from the poem to
support your answer, and be sure to cover the whole poem.
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Summarize the changes in the speaker's mood over the course of the entire
poem, noting those sections where you see a signficant shift and explaining
why.
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Tennyson uses a number of devices to provide structure for the poem. One
is the repeated appearance of certain days: Christmas, the anniversary
of Hallam's death, etc. Look closely at the poem's three Christmas sections
(28-30, 78, 104-06). What makes Christmas such an important day in the
emotional life of the speaker? What do these three accounts of different
Christmases have in common? How do they differ? How does Tennyson use them
to chart the movement of the speaker's state of mind?
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Summarize what happens in section 95, the famous "By night we lingered
on the lawn." What makes this section so important in the speaker's effort
to come to terms with Hallam's death?
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In what specific ways do sections 118, 120, and 124 provide answers to
questions raised or positions adopted earlier in the poem?
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Like Paradise Lost or Pope's "Essay on Man," this poem is a theodicy:
it tries to explain the ways of God to man. In particular, the question
here is how to reconcile the death of Hallam, so young, so talented, so
beloved, with the existence of a wise and merciful and beneficent god.
Why does the speaker reject the view that God's concern is with human beings
as a species rather than with individual humans? How does the speaker finally
resolve the problem of the purpose of Hallam's tragic, early death in the
Epilogue?