Critical Analysis Of The Rape Of The

Lock Essay, Research Paper

Alex? s Analysis of Any Abject Abuse

The devastation of the expansive manner of the heroic poem is merely what Pope was after in his mock heroic poem, & # 8220 ; The Rape of the Lock. & # 8221 ; Pope had no such cosmopolitan end, or moral dictums to do as did Milton. His intent was simply to expose the life of the aristocracy of his clip. While Milton chose clean poetry to show the enormousness of the landscape of his heroic poem, Pope chose to use the heroic pair to trivialise this magnificence. Pope & # 8217 ; s speedy humor bounces the reader along his elaborate description of his parlor-room heroic poem. His content is purposefully fiddling, his range purposefully thin, his manner purposefully blithe, and hence his pick of signifier purposefully geared toward the smooth, natural beat of the epic pair. The caesura, the end-stopped lines, and the perfect rimes lend the exact sum of manners and merriment to his work.

Writing for a society that values visual aspects and societal frivolousnesss, he uses these assorted manners of behaviour to name attending to the behaviour itself. Pope comparisons and contrasts. He places important life factors ( i.e. , endurance, decease, etc. ) side by side with the fiddling ( although non to Belinda and her friends: love letters, accoutrements ) . Although Pope is decidedly indicating to the & # 8220 ; lightness & # 8221 ; of the societal life of the privileged, he besides recognizes their earnestness in trying to be polite and well-bred and make-believe to

acknowledge where the true values lie.

Pope satirizes female amour propre. He wrote the verse form at the petition of his friend, John Caryll, in an attempt to do peace between real-life lovers. The incident of the lock of hair was factual ; Pope & # 8217 ; s purpose was to thin with wit the sick feelings aroused by the matter. He was, in fact, seting a minor incident into position, and to this terminal, chose a mock-heroic signifier, composing the verse form as a & # 8220 ; take-off & # 8221 ; epic poesy, peculiarly the work of Milton. He is ask foring the persons involved to express joy at themselves, to see how emotion had inflated their response to what was truly an event of no effect. For the reader, the incident becomes a statement about human folly, a lesson on female amour propre, and a sarcasm of the rites of wooing. Possibly Pope besides intended to notice on the meaningless lives of the upper categories. The verse form was published in 1712 and once more in 1714 ; likely the sarcasm is more biting in the ulterior version than in the 1 presented to Miss Fermor. Pope could barely hold hope to comfort the lady & # 8217 ; s wounded pride by indicating out her amour propre and empty-headedness.

In maintaining with his pick of mock-heroic signifier, Pope employs a & # 8220 ; high-class & # 8221 ; poetic enunciation and the stately iambic pentameter of dignified heroic poems like Paradise Lost. And of class, Pope & # 8217 ; s command of the heroic pair, and the balanced, measured beat of his lines, lend an even greater air of sedateness. To accomplish this consequence, he inverts the sentence structure of ordinary address, as in these lines: & # 8220 ; Her lively looks a spritely head unwrap & # 8221 ; ( two, 9 ) , & # 8220 ; & # 8221 ; Favors to none, to all she smiles extends & # 8221 ; ( II, 11 ) , and & # 8220 ; Bright as the Sun, her eyes the gazers strike & # 8221 ; ( two, 13 ) . The consequence of this inversion is to add rhetorical weight to the terminal of the line ; the sentence feels peculiarly & # 8220 ; complete. & # 8221 ; At the same clip, the reader is ever cognizant that the verse form is a gag. Pope comes right out and says so. For illustration, one heroic poem tradition is to open with a statement of intent and an supplication to the Muse. Pope states his intent as being to sing of the & # 8220 ; dire discourtesy & # 8221 ; that springs from & # 8220 ; amative causes & # 8221 ; and the & # 8220 ; mighty competitions & # 8221 ; that rise from & # 8220 ; fiddling things & # 8221 ; ( 1-2 ) & # 8212 ; barely the lofty and weighty topics of heroic poem poesy & # 8212 ; and names his Muse & # 8220 ; Caryll & # 8221 ; ( 3 ) for his friend John Caryll, the relation of the immature Godhead who stole the lock of hair from Arabella Fermor & # 8212 ; non the proper kind of Muse for heroic poesy. By manner of fabulous liquors vibrating over earthly concerns, Pope gives us sylphs that are truly the liquors of immature adult females like Belinda. Milton & # 8217 ; s Adam had the angel Raphael looking out for him ; Belinda has Ariel, one of the & # 8220 ; light reserves of the lower sky & # 8221 ; ( 42 ) . He jestingly raises Belinda to the elevated stature proper to epic heroines by turn toing her as & # 8220 ; Fairest of persons, 1000 distinguished care/ Of 1000s bright dwellers of air & # 8221 ; ( 27-28 ) and exorts her: & # 8220 ; thy ain importance know & # 8221 ; ( 35 ) ; but because Belinda is truly merely a & # 8220 ; soft belle & # 8221 ; ( 8 ) , a pampered and privileged immature adult female, capable of mere & # 8220 ; infant idea & # 8221 ; ( 29 ) , the consequence is humourous.

The bets in this mock-heroic heroic poem are Belinda & # 8217 ; s girlhood, and the convention of the heroic poem warning comes by manner of Ariel & # 8217 ; s reading of bad portents: & # 8220 ; Late as I ranged the crystal natural states of air, / In the clear mirror of thy opinion star/ I saw, alas! some awful event impend/ . . . Beware of all, but most beware of Man! & # 8221 ; ( 105-114 ) . Belinda & # 8217 ; s public presentation of her toilette, assisted by Betty, her & # 8220 ; inferior priestess & # 8221 ;

( 127 ) , is described as the armament of the heroic poem hero: “Now atrocious Beauty put on all its arms” ( 138 ) , and the images evoked in Pope’s description of the assorted picks and aromas on Belinda’s amour propre invests them with a value and exoticness they don’t deserve: “Unnumbered hoarded wealths, ” “glittering spoil, ” “India’s glowing treasures, ” “all Arabia breathes from yonder box, ” “The tortoise here and

elephant unite & # 8221 ; ( 129-135 ) By agencies of exaggeration, Pope manages to uncover the true ineptitude of these substances.

Pope advocates the usage of concrete, Saxonate words over abstract, Latinate 1s in poesy, and offers legion illustrations from 18th century poesy of how the consequence of abstraction is to demo a deficiency of emotional battle and perchance even a physical distance between the poet and his topic. Yet Pope defends Miltonian & # 8220 ; poetic enunciation, & # 8221 ; in & # 8220 ; Rape, & # 8221 ; as sometimes being the most proper and natural manner for a peculiar poet to utilize. Certainly such a manner is well-suited to & # 8220 ; The Rape of the Lock, & # 8221 ; precisely because it does strike the reader as & # 8220 ; excessively much, & # 8221 ; as & # 8220 ; excessively high & # 8221 ; for the capable affair. & # 8220 ; Not with more glorifications, in the ethereal field, / The Sun first rises o & # 8217 ; er the purpled chief, / Than, publishing Forth, the challenger of his beams/ Launched on the bosom of the Ag Thames & # 8221 ; ( ii, 1-4 ) . The usage of such & # 8220 ; high falutin & # 8217 ; & # 8221 ; rhetoric to depict a immature lady on her manner to Hampton Court to play cards is witty and screaming. Further, it allows the reader a sense of satisfaction to be & # 8220 ; in & # 8221 ; on the gag. Besides, Pope balances such abstract, Miltonian description with concrete images every bit good. He explains, for case, that such female amour propres as a & # 8220 ; love of ombre & # 8221 ; survive after decease ( 56 ) , surely a particular, concrete image, and shows us & # 8220 ; lapdogs giv [ ing ] themselves the bestiring shingle & # 8221 ; ( 15 ) . Particularly effectual is when Pope combines the abstract with the concrete in a individual pair, as in such lines as & # 8220 ; Think what an materiel 1000 hast in air, / And position with scorn two pages and a chair & # 8221 ; ( 45-46 ) , or when he combines Miltonian manner with upper category English slang, as in & # 8220 ; If to her sharesome female mistakes fall, / Look on her face, and you & # 8217 ; ll bury & # 8216 ; em all & # 8221 ; ( ii, 17-18 ) . This shows that merely because the topic of Pope? s authorship is mere frivolousness, it should non be concluded that the composing itself is capricious. Pope can boast that he wrote his timeless heroic poem simply about two disputing Catholic households and a lock of hair, whereas Milton had Satan, God, Eve, Adam, and the full creative activity of the existence to chew over about.

In decision, Pope focuses on a peculiar adult female and therefore succeeds in making a convincing portrayal that the reader accepts and applies to a general population of immature adult females. Belinda may be superficial and instead airheaded, possessed of & # 8220 ; a sprightly head. . ./ Quick as her eyes, and every bit unfixed as those & # 8221 ; ( 9-10 ) , but she is capturing and guiltless, excessively. Many of the plants that have been read in this category depict Time as a destructive and baneful force. Time plays a important function in Pope? s underlying message which is that all earthly things must yield to the inevitable nature that is Time:

& # 8220 ; But since, alas! Frail beauty must disintegrate,

Curled or uncurled, since locks will turn grey ;

Since painted, or non painted, all shall melt,

And she who scorns a adult male must decease a amah ; & # 8221 ; ( V, 25-28 )

& # 8220 ; For, after all the slayings of your oculus,

When, after 1000000s slain, yourself shall decease:

When those just Suns shall put, as set they must,

And all those braids shall be laid in dust, & # 8221 ; ( V, 145-148 )

Pope inquiries why a society with so much potency wastes its energy in banal behaviour, thought, and judgement. She is the merchandise of her civilization, her societal category and the times. At times, we can see that Pope can associate with Belinda. Much of the incrimination for her can be pointed to the gratuitous imposts of her society. When Pope says, & # 8220 ; Yet graceful easiness, and sweetness nothingness of pride, /Might fell her mistakes, if belles had mistakes to conceal & # 8221 ; ( II, 15-16 ) the reader knows he? s being generous ; we? ve already seen her mistake. Pope elevates Belinda to the stature of a goddess, although the remainder of the verse form efficaciously strips her of this undeserved rubric.

Pope seems to be indicating his critical and sarcastic finger at human nature. There is a sense of dichotomy in his manner that praises his topics on one degree and criticizes them the following. That is why the stoping is so fitting. He addresses the dichotomy of human existences as an animate being capable of ground, but an carnal nevertheless. It is the internal human battle that Pope wishes to turn to, and hopefully, conveying to visible radiation. By utilizing a satirical and misanthropic attack to turn to the values and thoughts of a maladjusted society, along with a combination of such elements as irony, humor, and wit, Pope complete a narrative worthy to be ranked amongst the greatest literary plants of all clip.