Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock In this poem, Pope pokes fun at female vanity. Pope wrote Rape of the Lock expressly at the request of his friend, John Caryll, in an effort to make peace between real-life lovers. The incident of the lock of hair was factual; Pope's intention was to mix humor with the ill feelings aroused by the affair. He was, in fact, putting a minor incident into perspective, and to that …showed first 75 words of 695 total…

…showed last 75 words of 695 total…and "The tortoise here and elephant unite". By means of rhetorical exaggeration, Pope manages to reveal the true worthlessness of these substances. Pope applies Milton's poetic style in the Rape of the Lock. This style is well suited to the Rape of the Lock because it strikes the reader as too much or too high for the subject matter: Not with more Glories, in th' Ethereal Plain, The sun first rises o'er the purpled Main,%0