On The Want Of Money By William Hazlitt

622 Words2 Pages

The center of many stories is the inspiration that money can’t buy happiness and that people can live healthy and happy lives without money. In the passage; “On the Want of Money” by William Hazlitt, the author completely disagrees with this, money may not buy happiness, however, without money agony is sure to follow. Money is such an important aspect in or lives, that if we have none it is just like taking away your ability to breath, tormenting and distressing. According to Hazlitt, the idea of being without money is pure craziness; your life will become full of anguish and sorrow. Hazlitt makes the argument that money the key to a prosperous life, and by using despondent word choices and engrossing syntactical strategies, Hazlitt successfully reveals that, if money cannot buy happiness, a lack thereof can certainly led to misery. Hazlitt’s word choice in his opening statement provides an example of his technique in the rest of the passage. Hazlitt starts off the passage with “literally and truly”, this set the mood for the entire passage. The authors use of “literally and truly”, were …show more content…

In every Hazlitt provides consists of negative situation, for example when he states “…it is not to be sent for to court, or asked out to dinner, or noticed on the street; it is not to have your opinion consulted or else rejected with contempt…to grow crabbed, morose, and querulous…”. In most of these examples Hazlitt stresses the atrocious circumstance with strong negative adjectives or verbs. “Rejected”, “scrutinized”, “irksome”, “contempt”, “scrivener” “crabbed”, “morose”; are just some examples of the endless repetition of such disheartening word choices emphasizes how emphatically Hazlitt believes that money is an essential quality for happy life. Even the irony evident in the last sentences is negative, conveying the utter disparity of one without

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