A Broken Appointment: absence becomes an accusation

1. Opening and situation: The speaker addresses a woman who failed to arrive for a planned meeting, but his deepest complaint is that her absence appears to show a lack of compassion.
2. Development: He admits that she does not love him, yet argues that an hour of kindness could have comforted a man worn down by time.
3. Ending and judgement: The poem leaves the speaker's demand open to judgement: it can sound humane, self-pitying or entitled.

Rejection, compassion and entitlement remain in tension

1. First theme: Rejection becomes an ethical argument about whether kindness is owed without love.
2. Second theme: Time is experienced as pressure and injury while the speaker waits.
3. Complication: The absent woman's silence gives the speaker total control of the accusation, which makes his reliability worth testing.

Refrains and line length trap the speaker in grievance

1. Structure: Two eight-line stanzas circle around the refrains “You did not come” and “You love not me?”, so the thought cannot move beyond rejection.
2. Voice and language: Direct address is an apostrophe: the repeated “you” makes absence audible while also sharpening blame.
3. Pattern and effect: Mostly longer pentameter lines are framed by brief refrain lines, making each blunt fact land after the speaker's elaborate reasoning.

Hardy's date, a productive comparison and an exam route

1. Context: Hardy published the poem in Poems of the Past and the Present in 1901; use this securely dated context rather than guessing that the speaker is Hardy himself.
2. Comparison route: Compare with a poem about disappointed love, absence or memory, focusing on whether the speaker accepts loss or tries to assign blame.
3. Exam route: For an exam paragraph on rejection, connect the opening accusation, the appeal to pity and the questioning refrain so your argument tests the speaker's reliability across both stanzas.

Developing an exam argument

A strong response on A Broken Appointment by Thomas Hardy should establish the speaker’s situation and trace how the poem’s attitude develops. Select short quotations from the opening, a turning point and the ending. Analyse imagery, diction, sound, rhythm, stanza pattern and line movement only where they help explain meaning. Link contextual knowledge directly to the poem’s voice and purpose rather than adding detached facts.

For comparison, identify a meaningful shared idea and then a revealing difference in viewpoint or method. Integrate both poems within each paragraph, using comparative language to explain how their choices create different effects. Revise flexible pairings and a small bank of precise quotations so that the argument can be adapted to the question instead of reproducing a memorised essay.

Developing a critical argument

A strong response to A Broken Appointment by Thomas Hardy should move beyond retelling and build a clear interpretation of how meaning develops. Begin with the central tension, relationship or idea that the text explores, then trace how it changes across the work or extract. Each paragraph should make a claim that can be debated, support it with a brief and precise reference, and explain how the writer’s choices shape the reader’s understanding. Where the evidence allows more than one reading, acknowledge the alternative and explain why one interpretation is more convincing. This creates a sustained argument instead of a sequence of disconnected observations.

Evidence, method and context

When analysing A Broken Appointment by Thomas Hardy, choose evidence for analytical value rather than length. Focus on individual words, images, contrasts, patterns of sound or syntax, narrative viewpoint, dramatic action, form and structural turning points. Name a method only when the term helps the explanation. The essential move is to connect the detail to its immediate effect and then to the larger theme or character development. Context should clarify the text rather than replace analysis: link relevant social, historical, literary or biographical knowledge directly to a specific choice in the writing, and avoid broad background paragraphs that could apply to any text.

Exam application

Before writing about A Broken Appointment by Thomas Hardy, turn the question into a provisional argument and select three or four moments that show development, contrast or complication. Organise the response around ideas rather than following the text mechanically. Use topic sentences to answer the question, embed concise quotations, and end each paragraph by returning to the significance of the evidence. Reserve time to discuss the ending or final movement because it often confirms, unsettles or transforms the text’s earlier concerns. In the final check, remove unsupported assertions, replace vague comments such as “this makes the reader want to read on” with precise effects, and confirm that every paragraph advances the same overall interpretation.