by Cheryl Kottke

Created on: August 14, 2009

Thomas Hardy's poem "The Convergence of the Twain" deals with the force of fate and man's destiny which man has no control over. Hardy uses the event of the Titanic to show the forces of fate that man cannot control his destiny. When I first read "The Convergence of the Twain", I thought it was a poem relating the loss of the Titanic and Hardy's personal feelings and views about the event. But Hardy's poem concerns human aspects of pride, vanity, man and nature, coincidence and the force of fate.

The poem's event is well known and apparent but Hardy gives it a profound significance. The poem is written in simple narration without a speaker, unless Hardy is the speaker himself. The Titanic sank on her maiden voyage on April 15, 1912 in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg. Hardy gives the poem a profound significance because of the impact left on man. In stanza eleven, line three, Hardy tells how the sinking of the Titanic "jars two hemispheres" - England and America. After the Titanic's sinking, the world was faced with the fact that they had been playing odds against fate and they could no longer ignore them.

The poem begins by creating the scene of the Titanic at the bottom of the sea far from the "Pride of Life" and vanity that built her. He personifies the Titanic as "her" and "she", the way ships are referred to as women. Hardy used "Pride of Life" to mean technology. The latest and most modern marine equipment available went into the designing of the "unsinkable" Titanic. Hardy emphasized "Pride of Life" because of the overconfidence man had in his advancement in technology at the time. This overconfidence led to the deceptive believes that the Titanic was unsinkable thereby challenging fate and coincidence.

Despite the status of the Titanic with all of her wealth and modern technology, she sits at the bottom of the sea. In stanza, two it talks about how her great steel chambers, which once burned with bright red fires, now, have the cold currents of the sea running through them. In stanza three Hardy continues to describe the fate of the Titanic. Here the mirrors are used to also describe the wealthy rich and affluent passengers aboard the Titanic as well. Now all that is reflected from her mirrors are sea-worms, which are indifferent to her finery. Moreover, the jewels that were meant to attract well-to-do passengers are now dimmed and gone. The glitter is no more. Stanza five is ironic in the sense that all of the "vaingloriousness"

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>