Tuesday, March 26, 2013

"The Convergence of the Twain"-Thomas Hardy

In the first sections of the poem, the speaker highlights what a waste the Titanic was.  The boat consisted primarily of members of the American and British high-class.  Much intelligence and wealth was lost at its sinking.
"Jewels in joy designed 
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind." (Hardy, 778)

Surprisingly, the speaker never references the loss of life.  However, he does seem to take a swing at them in the first section when contrasts the solitude of the sea to human vanity and how the two would never had naturally mixed.  He furthers this point as the poem shifts from the boat's current state to when the boat converged with the iceberg.  He references a force one may perceive to be fate as "the Imminent Will" and the "Spinner of the Years."  With this specific diction, the speaker indicates, the collision, while unnatural, was unavoidable.  However, rather than focus on how nature destroyed the ship and all the lives upon it.  Earlier in the poem, the speaker discusses how the ship has disrupted the peacefulness of the sea.  According to him, human conceit is a blemish, not something to take pride in.