Savage Neal SavageMrs. CookrightLAC 14/17/2015Hesperus PridePride, humanity's flaw. In 1842, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published The Wreck of the Hesperus in the book Ballads and Other Poems. Longfellow based his poem off of the Great Blizzard of 1839. Longfellow established the ship, The Hesperus, off of the real life ship, The Favorite, which sank on the reefs of Norman's Woe. Longfellow got the ship's name, The Hesperus, from a real Hesperus that sank near Boston. He then merged these three details together to create the poem we know and love, The Wreck of the Hesperus. Longfellow exhibits the pride of the ship's captain that led to the tragic sinking of The Hesperus really well. Longfellow does this through the use of imagery and voice to show the skipper's pride, and how it effects those around him.

First up, Longfellow's boastful skipper. Longfellow writes The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, and a scornful laugh laughed he. In our society, smoking pipes and, indeed, scornful laughs are considered to be traits of the prideful. As such, Longfellow, by including this line, implements the image that the captain is quite prideful into the reader's mind early on. Continuing to show the sea captain's egoistical ways, Longfellow pens do not tremble so for I can weather the roughest gale that ever wind did blow. The commander assumes that nature cannot send anything his way that he cannot beat. He truly thinks this because, in his mind, he's unbeatable, invincible, and unsinkable by anything. In other words, he has extreme self-confidence. Indeed, he has too much self-confidence for his own good, as we see in the poem. In the poem, we see an old sailor, who had sailed to the Spanish Main and back, heavily advise the captain not to make the sea-going. The scene that unfolds from this, is that the sea captain laughs off the, as we see in the poem, correct advice of the skilled sailor. Longfellow includes this bit of the poem because at the time of writing, and even in modern civilization, those who have done it before are considered the knowledgeable ones. Henry Longfellow, by printing that the experienced sailor who had been to the Spanish Main, and having the skipper ignore his advice, injects the concept that the sea captain is self-important, due to his neglecting the professional opinion. These three images and characterizations are used in the poem, The Wreck of the Hesperus, to display the captain's high-and-mighty attitude which, ultimately, leads to death and despair.Longfellow also uses imagery to show the consequence of the skipper's pride on those near him. Firstly, Longfellow writes, briefly, The salt tears in her eyes. This can be interpreted to mean to show her youthfulness and innocence. Longfellow also pens He saw her hair, like the brown seaweed, on the billows rise and fall. While people can take this to mean many different things, I, personally, take this to be trying to discreetly say that her is still pure brown, reflecting the girl's own pureness. Longfellow also scrawls then she clasped her hands and prayed that saved she might be saved, and she thought of Christ, who stilled the waves, on the Lake of Galilee. Longfellow included this text to show the woman's youth because most people tend to forget their schooling, especially when that school doesn't directly correlate to their daily life, e.g religion. The basis that the woman still knows this verse from the Bible demonstrates that she is likely relatively young, or, if not young, at least innocent. Longfellow uses a mix of imagery and diction to exhibit both the woman's youth and purity in the poem, The Wreck of the Hesperus.Pride truly does go before a catastrophic fall, as we've seen. We saw a boastful and foolish captain lead himself and dozens of others, including his own daughter, to their untimely ends on the reefs of Norman's Woe. In conclusion, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow uses imagery and voice to illustrate how one's pride can lead to the tragic fall of both oneself and innocent bystanders.