Cool Clary
This town is depicted as a typical fifteenth-century English town. Fry-Harris beautifully describes the town using rich imagery, drawing attention to the pastoral nature of the town, such as the gardens and wildlife. For example, the following passage is suggestive of the pastoral setting:
"You look as though you had come straight out of a wheelbarrow; and not even straight out. And the air so trim and fresh."
Thomas' dissillusionment
Thomas' disillusionment is referred to repeatedly in the text, and Harris uses rich imagery to describe it. For example, in the following passage, Thomas explains that although he tries to get drunk as an escape from the real world, this still doesn't work:
Don't mention it. I've never seen a world
So festering with damnation. I have left
Rings of beer on every alehouse table
From the salt sea-coast across half a dozen counties,
But each time I thought I was on the way
To a faintly festive hiccup
The sight of the damned world sobered me up again.
Disillusionment
In the following passage, Thomas begs Richard to see him as he is:
Just see me
As I am, me like a perambulating
Vegetable, patched with inconsequential
Hair, looking out of two small jellies for the means
Of life, balanced on folding bones, my sex
No beauty but a blemish to be hidden
Behind judicious rags, driven and scorched
By boomerang rages and lunacies which never
Touch the accommodating artichoke
Or the seraphic strawberry beaming in its bed"
Here, we get an idea about what Thomas believes about life, and why he feels disillusioned. He sees the world through eyes of cynicism and has lost all hope for having a meaningful life.
