Elegy to and Unfortunate Lady Essay -- essays papers

Elegy to and Unfortunate Lady In Alexander popes song Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Pope uses a great amount of war-like imagery to enhance his vision of the felo-de-se described. He creates allies and enemies, weapons and invasions, as healthful as the gruesome death that only seems to come from war. These pieces add to the overall meaning of the work and the vision of the event that has occurred, giving the reader an image of a battle occurring.The first images of the war or battle are that of the victim of battle. Starting at line four and extending to line ten, I find that Pope is using a great amount of imagery to depict the womans wound and the fate upon which she has fallen. In line four he describes her wound in only three words bleeding bosom gord, but he then extends the depiction of her wound into how it was obtained. He describes the knife or the toughie that she must have used to kill herself with as a sword, which is something that would typ ically be found in battle rather than in the show window of a suicide. He also brings in the theory of the ancient Roman justice system for not just war but any crime. It is some(prenominal) greater and braver to die by your own sword than by any other. She kills herself for the simple fact that in her eyes she must be punished for benignant some one too much however, her death is the start of the real war, between Pope and the society and family that abandoned her.Pope sides with the ghost in the numbers and criticizes her family and society for her death. In line thirty he states clearly his great dislike for the uncle who he labels as Thou, mean deserter of thy brothers parentage This is an apparent line drawn between what Pope believed should have occurred and w... ... else, at least through her father or uncle, but once she died, all of her titles, wealth, peach tree and honor meant nothing. They are things that could not be carried with her in her death. The lines abo ut her becoming a big bucks of dust also fit with the image of a pass who has fallen in battle because she is a pile of dust, which all the proud shall be. Every proud soldier who dies what they believe in becomes a pile of dust just like the lady in the poem.The war imagery in Popes poem helps define and clarify the point of facet Pope has on the even that has occurred. It also gives Pope a poetic platform on which to condemn the opposite side. He uses the imagery to describe the victim of war, the way death and battle are in war, and the opposing sides of this war and why they are battling creating a new view of the womans suicide and her as a soldier for love.