Guest Blogger - Will H.

Well, its the beginning of another unit, and the most obvious thing to talk about now is the weekend assignment: Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope, and since the assignment is relatively short, Ill only talk a little bit about the first canto to give room for other people to post. When I first began reading this assignment, I thought to myself I dont understand, what makes this satirical? Its just a description, but after looking it over some more I was able to figure it out. Obviously, the mock epic begins with the invocation of the Muses as we talked about in class for a lengthy five seconds, but moving past that, the first half of the page simply describes the morning rise while dogs stir and sleepless loversawake (Line 17). A bell tolls three times, and Belinda has a dream of a boy named Ariel who warns her to beware of man and that there is an unnamed dreaded event (Line 31-36). Then her dog wakes her up, she gets a love letter, gets dressed, and there is no mention of the dream again in the canto. Although this sounds a lot like oversimplification of the story, that was really all that happened, but within that there are already a few examples of satire that can be picked out. The main example lies in the main character: Belinda. Within the chapter, she has only slept, dressed and put on make-up, all of which are eloquently described with consistent use of rhyming couplets, and it is well summed up with one quote that caught my eye. Now awful Beauty puts on all its arms; the fair each moment rises in her charms, repairs her smiles, awakens every grace, and calls forth all wonders of her face (Line 61-64). Immediately, before realizing that awful also meant awesome, when taken as a negative term, the sentence takes on a slightly different meaning. From a negative perspective, Belinda is someone who puts on an act every day and covers up the awful Beauty, and this can be seen a symbol for the disingenuous state of many people in the world. In this light, it is obvious that Belinda lives through circles of useless frivolous action, flirtation with lords, and lethargy, all leaving her progress as a productive person at a standstill. Of course, this same quote can be taken in a positive light as well with the denotation of awful as awe-inspiring. In this sense, Belinda is a beautiful person at heart that only tries to show that to the world by accentuating it. This idea, is what mainly what makes this description a satire, because it mocks the trivial actions of women through an anecdote by using the double meaning of words and the epic style. Anyway, now that this has all been explained, I would really like to pose a similar question to all who read this: what else makes this a satire and how does it mock certain elements of the world?