Personal Life and William Hazlitt

Many people say will say that “money cannot buy happiness. ” Nineteenth-century author, William Hazlitt, wrote “On The Want of Money” to put forward his belief that a life without money is a life full of misery. Hazlitt uses negative diction, parallelism, and specific syntax to show that a person could not lead a happy life without money. In his writing, Hazlitt uses negative diction to discuss the importance of money in one’s life.. Hazlitt uses words like “crabbed” “morose” and “querulous” to show the discontent one would feel without money.

With his gloomy word choice, Hazlitt establishes a negative tone and gives his audience a clear idea of what a miserable life one would have without money. Doing this, he suggests the idea that the poor have no control of their lives because they don’t have the money to change the way their miserable lives. Equally important, Hazlitt uses parallelism to stress the importance of money in a happy life and show the dreadful instances a person in poverty can go through.

He states that living without money, “it is to live out of the world, or to be despised if you come into it…it is to be scrutinized by strangers, and neglected by friends…” By doing this, Hazlitt explains how a person without money cannot possibly be happy, because he or she will be disliked by everyone around them. The dark mood set by all of the examples Hazlitt gives portrays what Hazlitt thinks a life without money would be: difficult, lonely and overall unhappy

Furthermore, Hazlitt uses specific syntax to prove his point that one without money cannot possibly be happy. He uses one long sentence that stretches from lines 2 to 47 to put an emphasis on the fact that people without money lead a life filled with misery. Hazlitt’s use of the lengthy sentence represent all of the never-ending obstacles one without money faces. Hazlitt’s purpose in doing this is to accent his idea that a person without money does not lead a happy life.

By using one long sentence instead of many shorter ones, Hazlitt makes the reader feel hopeless and as if they were drowning in their distress Overall, Hazlitt uses negative diction, parallelism and syntax to show his belief that money is what gives you happiness in life. By stating so many examples and employing his strategies, Hazlitt makes reader feel deprived of their hope of being happy in this world without money, which is exactly what the author’s purpose was. To be without money is to be “…dissatisfied with every one, but most so with yourself.. ”