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In his composition “The Affluence of the Twain, ” Jones Hardy explains the unfortunate, yet truly inevitable, sinking of the supposedly invincible Rms titanic. Concurrently, the poem describes humanity’s vain struggle resistant to the steadfast makes of nature. The poem’s structural business as well as diction and radical language convey the speaker’s disapproving frame of mind towards male’s hubristic creation of the Titanic.
The poem’s set up into rhyming tercets along with further split into three distinct areas based on a great inverted chronology reflect natural absolute impact over the inevitability of the Titanic’s crash. Each tercet consists of two trimeters such as “In the isolation of the ocean / deep from human being vanity” (1-2) and one particular hexameter including “and the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly sofas she” (3). The addition of the three syllables in the first collection and the 3 syllables from the subsequent series add up to the six syllables found in the third line, mimicking the concurrence of the deliver and the iceberg. Furthermore, steady end rhymes such as “pyres” (4), “fires” (5), and “lyres” (6) contribute to the clean, flowing beat of the stanzas, creating a wave-like pattern that reflects the poem’s establishing. Additionally , stanzas one through five illustrate in media res the aftermath with the Titanic’s crash using images of the send at the bottom from the sea and “deep via human vanity” (2), reinforcing the idea that the ship was destined to fail from the moment of its invention. In this way, stanzas six through eight, which in turn describe the “fashioning as well as of this creature of cleaving wing” (16-17), as well as stanzas nine through eleven, which will portray the actual crash when the ship as well as the iceberg “were bent / by routes coincident” (28-29), merely become retrospective flashbacks of an eventually failed effort. Together, the poem’s structure and unique chronology reflect the destined “Convergence from the Twain, inches man and nature, reminding readers of God’s formidability and toute-puissance.
Through diction and somber images, the poem emphasizes the speaker’s critical tone of humanity’s unsuspecting and hubristic belief which it could greatest nature by simply constructing the ostensibly indestructible Titanic. The Titanic was at one time the greatest luxury ship ever built, offering “mirrors designed / to glass the opulent” (7-8). Now, “the sea-worm” (9), a “grotesque, slimed, foolish, and indifferent” (9) monster crawls around the once lavish mirrors, the negative associations of these terms underscoring the potency of luxury to generate humans uninformed. Furthermore, “jewelsdesigned / to ravish the sensuous mind” (10-11) at the moment “lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind” (13), highlighting how the hubristic humans allowed their counter to control them, then ultimately regretted their particular pride when the Titanic damaged and their “gilded gear” (14) and “vaingloriousness” (15) were left behind to be enjoyed only by simply “dim moon-eyed fish” (13) who have not any use intended for such products. Blinded by pride in this seemingly unsinkable creation, humankind failed to respect the forces of mother nature, resulting in a tragic loss.
The satrical oppositions create between the deliver and the iceberg by exploit connotation and denotation additional substantiate the complete futility of man’s conceited challenge against God. Because the Titanic ship, a luxury sail liner, “grew / in stature, grace and hue” (22-23), the iceberg grew in the “shadowy silent distance” (24), building a stark distinction between the ship’s prideful luxury and the iceberg’s modest ease. Moreover, the paradoxical diction of conveying the banquise as the Titanic’s “sinister mate” (19) sets up the conceit with the ship and the iceberg while destined to satisfy. Their crash, portrayed while an “intimate welding” (27) when “consummation comes” (33), is a pun on a wedding and its sex intimacy. Importantly, this “one august event” (30) is definitely mediated by the “Spinner of Years” (31) and “Immanent Will” (18), alluding to the intervention of some work power to predestine this tragic occurrence. The ironic concept of the marriage involving the ship and the iceberg communicates that no matter how large or just how strong humankind built the Titanic, it was fated to collide together with the iceberg and sink.
The poem’s symbolic framework, imagery, diction, and radical language highlight the speaker’s critical attitude of mans foolish problem of God’s power. The Titanic, the biggest and most powerful ship ever that was originally engineered and promoted to be unsinkable, was bested during their maiden voyage by a guaranteed avoidable banquise. This misfortune not only symbolizes man’s loss against nature but also serves as a future reminder for all of humanity to hold its take great pride in in check.
