ON THE PLEASURE OF HATING

William Hazlitt

Sana ArastuAlex DaleSandy Aguirre

WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830)

Son of a Unitarian Minister • Traveled a lot

Obtained most of his views from his father

Philosopher, Artist, Poet, Journalist, and Writer

Key figure in Romanticism

Stressed the importance of feelings

Political infatuation with Napoleon

Very Controversial

Very vocal and powerful speaker

SUMMARY

Hazlitt starts off talking about spider

Makes hate seem animalistic

Hate is a human necessity

Man is a Strange being

Hate is a poisonous mineral

Hate spawns from our own insecurities

Friendships

People get tired of almost everything

Sick of his old opinions

Reason why he hates himself

LITERARY TECHNIQUES

-Diction

-Syntax

-Metaphors/similes

-Imagery

-tone

TONE/STYLE/SYNTAX

-Over all his style is very old fashioned

-Verbose, long sentence structures, big fancy

words

-We, us, ourselves, our

-He uses lots of exclamation points

Tone: Knowledgeable, pompous, bombastic

SIGNIFICANT QUOTES

“He hobbles awkwardly towards me” (Hazlitt, 189)

“The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats

into the heart of religion, and turns it to rankling

spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for

carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands; it

leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness,

and a narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over

the actions and motives of others” (Hazlitt, 192)

SIGNIFICANT QUOTES

“ We serve up a course of anecdotes, traits, masterstrokes

of character, and cut and hack at them till we are weary.”

(Hazlitt, 194) 

“It opens, and a young female head looks from it; a child,

yet woman grown; with an air of rustic innocence and the

graces of a princess, her eyes like those of doves, the lips

about to open, a smile of pleasure dimpling the whole face,

the jewels sparkling in her crisped hair, her youthful shape

compressed in a rich antique dress” (Hazlitt, 196)

SIGNIFICANT QUOTES

Without something to hate, we should lose the very

spring of thought and action, Life would turn to a

stagnant pool, were it not ruffled by the jarring

interests, the unruly passions, of men.” (Hazlitt, 190)

ETHOS

Ethos:• Appeals to ethos when referring back to

Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ford and other famous and well known writers.

• Explains how he hates “the very name of Fame and Genius, when works [from those authors] are “gone into the wastes of time”(195) and how now people rather read books that mean nothing.

PATHOS

Appeals to pathos with his vivid and emotional language

appeals to readers emotions when referring to horrible actions

that are done day to day by humans or any life form.• “Animals torment and worry one another without mercy: children

kill flies for sport: ever one reads the accidents and offences in a newspaper as the cream of the jest: a whole town runs to be present at a fire, and the spectator by no means exults to see it extinguished.”

pg. 190 : explains pure good , pain, love• pure good in how it grows insipid or bland• pain in how there is never enough of it; bittersweet• Love turns with indulgence then ends up in disgust

HAZLITT’S EFFECTIVENESS

Found it effective

Reaches to the readers with strong passion towards

what he believes. ( use of exclamation points all the time )• “It is because pleasure asks a greater effort of the mind

to support it than pain; and we turn after a little idle dalliance from what we love to what we hate!”

Use of literary devices (metaphors and similes) to

compare his thoughts to everyday things.• Compares life to “stagnant pool”