Epic Rape of the Lock

I think that it is interesting and ironic how Pope's "The Rape of the Lock," describing a man cutting a lock of hair from Belinda, is written in a very epic and stylized fashion. The form is in the canto style similar to "The Faerie Queene," and the style of writing very much calls to mind the epic style of "Beowulf" or even "The Odyssey" or "The Illiad." However, while the style is that of serious epics, Pope makes a simple card game into a vicious mythological battle, and scenes such as the card game as well as the premise of losing a lock of hair make the whole story a farce and a satire on the epic style. I also like how it shows the importance of hair and beauty to Belinda when Pope makes such a big deal out of the loss of a lock of her hair. If only a few words were changed, a reader would think that someone had died or something equally terrible had happened, but while I wouldn't like someone to cut off some of my hair and it was very shocking, losing some hair is not even close to the same scale of terribleness as death. Altogether, I really liked how Pope made a simple, though shocking, event into the main event of an epic story.

Rachel Means