Would+He+Have+a+Stroke?

“Those half-learn’d witling, numerous in our isle/As half-form’d insects on the banks of Nile;/Unfinish’d things, one know not what to call,/Their generation’s so equivocal” (40-43)

If this is what Pope though about his own generation, what would think of us?! We are such a fast paced society, or so obsessed with multi-tasking, many times we don’t finish what we start. Plus we have far less respect for the arts. Our school is one of the few that still teach Latin, and I haven’t heard of Greek ever being taught in high school. On top of all that we seem farther from Nature than ever (depending on how you define Nature. For the purposes of the post I will use the definition of Nature-anything relating to the outdoors, not manmade, or relating to self). We are such a technology based society, and only recently have I been seeing real push for “Go Green!” And today we are obsessed with pleasing others, usually to benefit us. We want to suck up to the boss so that we make more money to buy more stuff. It’s our society. We don’t really care too much anymore about our “inner being.” But is all of this in our writing? Would Pope look at what has been written since his time and condemn it? If he traveled in time and visited our generation I think he would he just have stroke, and keel over, right there on the spot. 1204599407

Haha I completely concur with you adi. Pope would take one look at the freedom the Romantic movement created in poetry and just die. I don't think he could handle it. I also think he would have major issues with the writers and critics of our time. There is no way that he could accept popular authors like Stephanie Meyer or Dan Brown. They don't exactly stick to Natural topics. Also, writers of today still argue like the Thomists and Scotists, something Pope seems to condemn. All around I think we would just disappoint Pope, but who would really want to please him? 1204858220

Well yes, we are not the perfect, unselfish, carpe diamy(I just made it a word ok), intellectual beings that Pope would like us to be, but I would have to disagree with your stroke theory. My reason is that though we live now and they lived then, people are still people. Our nature has not changed in a long time. Most of us are still selfish, ignorant, egotistical and lazy, but so were the generations upon generations before us. Pope may even like our society more than he would like his own just because of our education levels= more people that could understand and appreciate his writing. Many people I know may think that our society has lost quite a bit of its intellectual grasp, perhaps thinking that everyone read poetry and appreciated the arts back in the day. But this is not really true. As came up in class, poetry has probably just as small a following as it did back then. The difference is that the people who watch tv now, couldn't read a hundred years ago. If Pope came to the future, I think he would find much more of the same than you think. Agree, Disagree?1205370474

Personally, I think Pope would have a stroke if he saw what we have done to nature. adi, when you mentioned the "Go Green!" now popping up everywhere, it just made me think of that giant hole in the ozone layer. Our society today has taken advantage of nature. We use everything and anything we can get our hands on and turn it into something "unnatural." (unnatural meaning that it has been touched by human hands and made by human hands.) In Pope's time, nature was precious and was used for important aspects of life. Yes, we still use nature for important things, however, we have also destroyed nature because... well, we just do! (sad to think about... poor rainforests.) Look at what our world has come to, I have heard that our world is so messed up because of all the things we have done to it that we may all be gone in 40 years! (Ok, not true, but some people are kind of pessimistic). We have taken advantage of what God has given us and I think Pope would be disappointed. 1205378331

I have to agree with MKo and say that through all of our faults, the vast majority of people today are more educated than people were in his time. Also many of our technology, and advancements that have turned us into the fast paced society that we are today have also opened the doors for a limitless amount of learning and sharing of knowledge. Even if many people don't take advantage of it, there is no end to the amount of learning, and sharing of knowledge that you can have with the means of communication that we have today. Also I don't think that are problems are any worse than those problems people had in Popes time, we look back so fondly on times when kids didn't play video games every night, and fail to remeber the illiteracy, and lack of communication, and other faults of generations before us. The problems we have didn't just appear out of nowhere they just shifted. So while I'm sure Pope would be disappointed in some of the things we've done, he would probably delight in some of the things we have accomplished. 1205383525

Pope's essay applies to every generation of humanity because no generation of humanity can every completely learn to learn from nature's pure and rational ways. Pope, an enlightenment thinker, would prefer everyone who publishes anything significant to be rational, but will that ever be the case? Just looking at the validity of arguements in newspaper editorials, it is so difficult to find one in which every conclusion is valid based on its premises. Humans are naturally irrational beings; logic and rationality must be learned, and because it would be so difficult to educate the entirety of humanity on rationality, rationality, what Pope advocates as nature, could never happen, certainly not now.1205386420

Pope's statement reveals to us his feeling that his generation has lack of meaning, or at least can have so very many different interpretations that it's questionable and uncertain. Half-learn'd witlings? We are just young and stupid uneducated people. We are so great in number, and we surround ourselves with things that he doesn't even have names for, all of our material possessions. He sounds disgusted if you ask me, I mean, he did call us insects. Well, actually we are not even whole insects, we are half-form'd. Geez! That's a little harsh. I agree that maybe we take advantage of the Earth around us and we pride ourselves on how much money we have and occupy our days with not learning but entertainment, but we do good also. It's like how the media today doesn't show all of the schools we are setting up in the Middle East, only the killings. Why does everyone also focus on the negative? Why does he have to look down upon us? Insects! Seriously? I just think that he would be a much happier man if he worried more about himself and doing good for others around him than making a blanket statement about entire generations. I agree with him to a point, but don't think it's right of him to say that. I want to know how he would describe himself. 1205417198

Is it too harsh, AGe? I don't think so. Look at the majority of our society today: there's no need to improve yourself if you're good enough and comfortable where you are presently. This statement appears to the motto of our era, especially our generation. There seem to be fewer self-starting people who want to get up and make a name for themselves today. Last night at dinner, my sister was telling us that her math teacher yelled at them during the day and told them that they were going to end up on food stamps and work at MacDonald's when they got older if they didn't start caring about their grades. Kids just laughed her off; most of them didn't even know what food stamps were. My parents talked about how these insults would've made them burn as children, because when they were younger people felt shame about welfare and such; now, no one feels shame, and MacDonald's workers get benefits anyway. And especially in our area, where kids take their comfortable lives and good education for granted, they figure they don't have to do a lick of work in their lives and still could live better than half the country. In my mind, people like that are definitely half-formed.1205451714

I would definently think that Pope would have alot of problems with our generation the first and most important one being that our generation's constant need to question everything. If Pope were alive today and had a conversation about poetry with nearly anyone alive today he would find it shocking that anyone would question the perfection of Homer's poetry and its closeness to nature. What would make him mad the most would be our assertion that we really can't judge another person's art to a standard because everyone has their own standard and what is important would be how well that art conveys his meaning. To him that is preposterous since as we have seen in his essay there is a clear standard that poetry should be judged on and critics have a right to judge poetry to that standard. I also got the impression that he would say that the author's intention in making a work a poem has alot to do with wheather that is a poem or not because to him again there is a standard and if you move far enough away from the standard then maybe it could be excluded from poetry? That last idea was just a conjuncture but I think that this more than anything else will probably be his biggest beef with today's society although there are alot of other things to nitpick as well. user:DGr-c

The poets of today would have a very hard time pleasing Pope. They do not write about natural topics; they live in this fast paced society where their writing is sometimes to the point and sometimes crazy confusing. Pope likes organization and rhythm, but look at free verse. Pope would have a hay-day with that...wouldnt he? 1205466085

Oh, Pope would most certainly drop dead in a split second if he entered our culture. When do we ever even see nature? When we are walking from our car in the driveway to our front door? MKo has a point that people are still people, and I see where he is coming from saying that we may not have changed too much since way back when. But, technology makes a world of difference. People back then may have been selfish and self-centered the way we are now and may not have cared about poetry, but they were indeed closer to nature. They didn't have TV to distract them, or cell phones and iPods and computers and video games... We have so much STUFF, and it has made us oblivious to the world around us. No matter how you define nature, we are further from it then the people in Pope's time. 1205467665

Let's be clear here. Nature is not just the green trees and the fluffy bunnies and the hole in the ozone layer. Pope is arguing for something much deeper than that. He means nature in the sense of the world around us as a whole. Poetry, by his standards, should reflect phsyical nature, but it should also reflect human nature. As we have discussed, he believed that we had to tap into the roots of inner truth. This does not mean a return to the Garden of Eden days but rather a return to what it means to be a human living in the world. I believe that, as far as poetry is concerned, Pope would be thrilled that people are still trying to express human nature in writing. What I think would kill him, if anything, are the new forms that poetry, and literature in general, are taking these days. "We Real Cool" is a far cry from the Homerian epics that he claimed to be the basis of all writing. He wrote in 700+ lines of //rhymed poetry//, for goodness sake! I think that he would write off modern poetic architects as lazy, even if they are still trying to convey the essential truths. But I still think that there are enough William Faulkners (whom I am sure he would have adored) in this world even today to keep him satisfied. History has never gotten worse, as I have been told, it has just changed shape over time. And Pope knew that the world was filled with mindless rabble, as we have already expressed. Pope would have been just fine. 1205470744