Thomas Hardy Hap Analysis

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Eric Plaisance
Mrs. Truman
English 1302
28 March 2014

“Hap”

While using irony, personification, symbolism and assonance, Thomas Hardy illustrates his anger at God and wants God to look down at him and laugh at his disregard to him and his powerful miracles.

Hap is categorized as an Altered Sonnet poem written by Thomas Hardy with fourteen lines, organized into three stanzas using personification, irony, symbolism, and assonance written in 1866, but not published until 1898. The meter is iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEFFE. Hap is Hardy’s attempt to fight with the philosophical question that God truly exists and the purpose his existence. Throughout the poem it is clear that Hardy’s reason in writing the poem, “surely was to explore and explain the reasons for his own suffering” (Singleton) theme is unavoidability of misfortune in the fate of humans. As the poem begins, a negative tone is present from where Hardy talks about “a vengeful god”, (line 1) the evident lack of a capital “G” hinting at a lack of faith. He wants to know that there is some order to the way that his life is playing out and would welcome the fact that there is a being controlled by a being of the great strength, who enjoys the power that makes Hardy miserable. We discover that Hardy’s life is compounded by “suffering”, “sorrow” and “love’s loss”. (Lines 2,3,4) Hardy wishes that god exist, but cannot make him self believe so. Because all good and bad things that happen to humans aren't based or assigned by a powerful being at all. It all depends on luck or Hap.

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet that wrote and published m...

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...attempt to fight with the philosophical question that God truly exists and the purpose his existence. In the first stanza Hardy asks that difficult question of which is God real or not and why he has placed so much pain in his path and in the second stanza he states that if such a god existed then Hardy would be prepared to coil up and die. In the third stanza however, he says the random highs and lows in life are all the result of chance. It is simply‚ Crass Casualty/dicing Time or the purblind Doomsters‛ (Lines 11,12, 13) that decide whether to toss blessings or pain into our path as we walk through life. For Hardy it is evident of whether he believes there is a God or not. God watches everything humans do for his own amusement. Therefore, I believe any Christian would agree Hardy is a nut case for his silly beliefs that everything is controlled by luck or chance.

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