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A Study Guide for Henry W. Longfellow's "The Wreck of the Hesperus"
A Study Guide for Henry W. Longfellow's "The Wreck of the Hesperus"
A Study Guide for Henry W. Longfellow's "The Wreck of the Hesperus"
Ebook33 pages21 minutes

A Study Guide for Henry W. Longfellow's "The Wreck of the Hesperus"

By Gale and Cengage

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A Study Guide for Henry W. Longfellow's "The Wreck of the Hesperus," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 2, 2016
ISBN9781535840699
A Study Guide for Henry W. Longfellow's "The Wreck of the Hesperus"

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    Book preview

    A Study Guide for Henry W. Longfellow's "The Wreck of the Hesperus" - Gale

    09

    The Wreck of the Hesperus

    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    1841

    Introduction

    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Wreck of the Hesperus recounts the story of the shipwreck of a schooner Longfellow calls Hesperus in a severe hurricane off the coast of New England. Although nature is portrayed as unrelenting and brutal in some of its manifestations, the force of The Wreck of the Hesperus comes from Longfellow's portrayal of the human traits of pride and stubbornness in the face of nature's fierceness. The storm does not constitute the tragic aspect of the tale Longfellow tells; the captain's hubris does. Hubris is the term used to describe the pride that characterizes the heroes of Greek tragedy, the kind of pride that blinds people to their limitations and allows them to pit their will against the will or power of supernatural elements, like the gods or fate in Greek tragedy, or great natural forces, like the hurricane in The Wreck of the Hesperus. Hubris is clearly at work in the captain's proud and foolish refusal to heed the old sailor's warning. So is sacrifice, for when the captain realizes the danger, once the storm has struck and the schooner has foundered, he gives up his chance for survival, wrapping his daughter in his greatcoat and tying her to the ship's mast with the hope that she will survive instead. Although she does not, it is the combination of the captain's pride and his self-transcendence in his sacrifice that makes him a tragic hero and not just a victim of his own ill-considered decisions and stubborn response to

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