The Western Wind

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After Reve learns of Cecily Townshend’s affair and she closes her hands around his, he thinks: “Those lustful hands … A heavy ring on every finger can’t keep a woman to her husband” (p. 172), though he offers no real censure of the man with whom she has the affair. What are Reve’s attitudes toward women and relationships between men and women? Consider Sarah Spenser, his sister and mother, and the unnamed woman from his youth. How do each of them show independence of spirit? How does Reve’s view that God is testing him interfere with his relationships with women? Are Reve’s relationships with men healthier?

The Wilderness is Samantha Harvey’s first novel, but it feels like a mature work, as well crafted and as cryptic.”— Bookforum Zephyrus the western wind was also referred to by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Prologue of his Canterbury Tales, written c. 1388–1400 (first in Chaucer’s English then modernised): Trumping all the above might be Samantha Harvey, whose relative anonymity should end if her next novel, The Western Wind, does as well as it deserves . . . A murder mystery, an acute dissection of class and money, and fabulously written.”—James Kidd, Post Magazine, South China Morning Post (Must-Read Books in 2018) Baldwin, Emma. "Western Wind (Westron Wynde)". Poem Analysis, https://poemanalysis.com/undefined-poet/western-wind/. Accessed 1 November 2023. In Greek mythology, Zephyrus was the personification of the west wind and the bringer of light spring and early summer breezes; his Roman equivalent was Favonius (hence the adjective favonian, pertaining to the west wind).In any case, this has the best first line of the year: “Dust and ashes though I am, I sleep the sleep of angels.”

Alliteration: occurs when the poet repeats the same consonant sound at the beginning of multiple lines. For example, “Western Wind” and “wilt” in line one, and “rain” is used twice in line two. Newman infers that Reve is “a man of business,” who wants the bridge to bring money into Oakham, rather than a “man of the spirit,” who sees the bridge as an opportunity to venture into the wider world and make new discoveries (p. 223). Is this a fair characterization of Reve? Newman chides him for waiting for the answers to come to him, rather than actively seeking them. And the dean tells Reve that Oakham needs its priest to be strong: “Not some man hiding at his table eating a goose and hoping for the best” (p. 230). Does the echo of the dean’s criticism with Newman’s surprise you? Is Reve as passive as Newman and the dean make him out to be? His conversations with those coming to confess – although often for trivial sins or even to boast of their misdemeanors – Reve having been possibly the first person in England to adopt the idea of a confessional box (the idea taken from Italy) rather than confession being both face to face and largely in public; One theme that emerges through the book is the Western Wind – for Reve a wind inextricably bound up with his birth and faith. As he was being born, the village where he lived was in danger of being engulfed by fire and reluctantly he and his mother were abandoned by the villagers only to be saved by a last minute change of direction of the wind to the West, something this mother linked to Exodus 10: 12-20

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George Oppen alludes to the poem in "O Western Wind" (1962),"The Little Pin: Fragment" (1975) and "Disasters" (1976). Brodsky, Rachel (April 16, 2022). "Watch Carly Rae Jepsen Debut New Song "Western Wind" at Coachella". Stereogum . Retrieved August 5, 2022. I’d sooner climb up and sacrifice myself before I saw a single of my parish die. What a thing to say, if it was said with meaning. I didn’t know if I meant it. It didn’t matter, it would never come to be