Eric PlaisanceMrs. TrumanEnglish 130228 March 2014“Hap”Using irony, personification, symbolism and assonance, Thomas Hardy illustrates his anger towards God and wants God to look down on him and laugh at his contempt for him and his powerful miracles.Hap is classified 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 EFFEFFE. Hap is Hardy's attempt to wrestle with the philosophical question of whether God truly exists and the purpose of his existence. Throughout the poem it is clear that Hardy's motive in writing the poem “was surely to explore and explain the reasons for his own suffering” (Singleton). The theme is the inevitability of bad luck in the destiny of human beings. At the beginning of the poem, there is a negative tone from which Hardy talks about "a vengeful god", (line 1) the obvious lack of a capital "G" hinting at a lack of faith. He wants to know that there is some order to the way his life unfolds and would appreciate the fact that there is a being controlled by a being of great strength, who enjoys the power that makes Hardy unhappy. We discover that Hardy's life is one of "suffering", "pain" and "loss of love". (Lines 2,3,4) Hardy wishes that God exists, but cannot convince himself of it. Because all the good and bad things that happen to humans are not at all based on or assigned by a powerful being. It all depends on luck or Hap.Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet who wrote and published m...... middle of paper ......attempt to combat the philosophical question that God truly exists and purpose of its existence. In the first verse Hardy asks the difficult question of which God is real or not and why has he put so much pain in his path and in the second verse he states that if such a god existed then Hardy would be ready to roll up and die. . In the third stanza, however, he states that life's random ups and downs are all the result of chance. It is simply‚ Crass Casualty/dicing Time or the blind Doomsters‛ (Lines 11,12, 13) who decide whether to throw blessings or pain our path as we walk through life. For Hardy it is clear whether he believes in the existence of a God or not. God observes everything humans do for their own enjoyment. Therefore, I believe any Christian would agree that Hardy is a fool for his foolish beliefs that everything is controlled by luck or chance..
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