An Essay On Man By Alexander Pope

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Alexander Pope was an English poet during the late seventeen century until the mid-eighteenth century. An Essay on Man is an essay written by Pope that comprises of four epistles. The first three epistles were published in 1733, and the last was published the next year. This essay will focus on the, highly quoted, first paragraph of the second epistle of Essay on Man.
When looking at this poem there are several things I noticed. First, it is written in heroic couplets. Heroic couplets are rhymed lines of iambic pentameter in an “AABB” format. Another thing I noticed throughout the essay was that Alexander Pope was focusing on man’s confusion to whether he was just a man created in God’s image (a Christian idea) verses an animal (enlightenment idea). A third idea was his use of oxymoronic words in the same lines to express his thoughts. Also in this section, I noticed that there can be multiple interpretations of his writings that make it difficult to comprehend. Also, Popes uses words such as “mind” and “knowledge” that, when not looking closely, seem to be referring to the same side of his arguments, but, in reality, are on opposite sides.
Probably the most famous lines of this essay comes from the first two lines. Pope is telling man that it is their duty to study and strive to understand “himself” not God because man cannot understand God, so it would be a waste of time. Line three describes man as being placed between two things. He uses the term isthmus, which is a strip of land that connects two bigger masses of land (e.g. Isthmus of Panama). I’m not completely sure what they are between, but I am pretty sure it is between God and animals. Line four uses the oxymoron “darkly wise” and “rudely great.” “Darkly wi...

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...s more to learn.
Alexander Pope lived during the heart of the Enlightenment. Though he was a Christian, his writings show aspects of Enlightenment teachings and ideals. These teachings include reason, order, and man’s nature. His writings also include Christian principles, which was common in his time, because a vast majority of the common people were either practicing Christians or grew up in a Christian community. The Essay on Man is an argument between the two ideologies about, “Who is Right?” The essay is written in Early Modern English, so the structure and wordage would not cause readers during his time period. This does not mean people back then understood it in one reading. Pope writes in a style that can have multiple interpretations and explanations. He probably wanted his reads to make our own connections and conclusions when reading his works.

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