Personal Affluence In William Hazlitt's On The Want Of Money

Today’s society is centered around public reputation and personal affluence. This ideology is also reflected in the pre-twentieth century era, through the short passage, “On the Want of Money,” by William Hazlitt. Hazlitt uses various literary devices throughout his passage to describe his feelings towards the lack of money. He uses varied sentence structure and voice language, and a hatred tone to emphasize his displeasure towards the lack of money and society’s ridicule on impoverished people. Hazlitt uses varied sentence structure and voice language (patterns) to highlight his despise towards the lack of money. In the first paragraph, Hazlitt uses the anaphora (when the first part of consecutive sentences repeat) with “it is” to emphasize his point that having money is

Furthermore, Hazlitt uses long sentences, with many consecutive semicolons and asyndeton (without conjunctions in consecutive parts), to emphasize the long, dreary days spent without money and the passage rambles, or in another sense, rants about the uselessness of a life without money to highlight the lost, confused feelings of a person who is impoverished. An example of this is, “to forego liesure, freedom, ease of body and mind, to be dependent on the goodwill and caprice of others.” Also, at the end of the passage Hazlitt uses for the first time an exclamation point to send up a flag for the reader that Hazlitt is shouting emphatically that not only does society make you wollow in your own misfortunes, of lack of money, while you are alive, but also when you die. ‘The more affluent you are the better the life you lead’ is Hazlitt’s central feelings towards money. As for society, he feels this disgust for its mocking of the poor person even after death. Hazlitt writes, “The wiseacres will possibly, however, crowd round your coffin, and raise a