What is the Significance of the Heath in Return of the Native? :: English Literature

What is the Significance of the Heath in Return of the Native? It is evident right from the beginning that the heath plays an integral part in the novel â€Å"Return of the Native†, this is because the opening chapter is exclusively about the heath. The heath assists in creating the feelings of both central characters and the background heath folk, the first chapter is titled â€Å"A Face on which Time makes but little Impression†, meaning that Egdon Heath is timeless and everybody on it has little significance. The reader gains an insight of the novel and its genre through the first chapter, â€Å"It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.† This aids the reader in identifying that there is going to be something tragical in the novel. Hardy is also using personification, which brings the heath to life. In spite of this, the first chapter also does what every other first chapter in a novel does, it sets the scene. Egdon Heath, as far as the novel is concerned and the characters inside it, is the world. The only time that the novel ever abandons the heath is only briefly between pages 253-257 which is the part when Wildeve and Eustacia are at the dance together in Budmouth. It is comprehensible that the heath folk consider Egdon Heath to be everything when they talk about Paris as if it were a million miles away, â€Å"like a King’s Palace as far as diments go† is the description they use when describing Clym’s shop. Hardy also uses the heath as a metaphor for how the central characters are feeling. On page 206, when Clym moves out of his mothers house, the fir and beech trees are described to be â€Å"suffering more damage than during the highest winds of winter†¦ the wasting sap would bleed for many days to come†. We also get an insight to the way Eustacia is feeling through the storm on the heath on page 345-346, â€Å"Never was harmony more perfect than that between the chaos of her mind and the chaos of the world without†. The brief flowering in the summer time on Egdon heath represents the love between Eustacia and Clym, when it flowered it was beautiful and colourful and sweet, but it soon drooped, dried out and finally died. When Wildeve and Diggory Venn are playing dice on the heath, the contrast is prominent between human behaviour and nature, â€Å"The incongruity between the men’s deeds and their environment was striking†. Hardy is making a comment on human nature and it’s battle against nature. The behaviour of the two men is described as almost