Fate
“The Convergence of the Twain” centers around the idea that fate acts as a determining factor for all events on earth. The first few stanzas center on the tragic destiny of the Titanic. However, rather than mourning this as loss, the poem disregards the people who died in the crash by focusing on the crash itself. The speaker describes the iceberg and the ship as soulmates, or as two celestial bodies on a collision course. Both of these strategies reject the tragic, human dimensions of the crash in favor of a detached narrative of inevitability. Throughout the poem, Hardy takes advantage of the reader’s foreknowledge of the crash to create dramatic irony, as the builders of the ship don’t realize that their project is doomed. This tension between our knowledge and the knowledge of the poem’s subjects amplifies the cynical, detached tone of “The Convergence of the Twain” by ensuring that the reader, rather than empathizing with the humans, feels separate from them because we are aware of their fate. Ultimately, Hardy argues that, rather than feeling heartbreak over the sinking of the Titanic, we should see it as a lesson on fate’s omnipotence over the unfolding of events.
Human Vanity
Hardy contrasts the omnipotence of fate with the vanity of humans. In the first stanza, he personifies this vanity by referring to the “Pride of Life.” This literary device allows the speaker to paint the poem’s conflict as one not between man and nature, but rather between man’s pride and natural fate. Vanity thus becomes not an attribute of people, but rather an independent actor within the poem. Later, the fish see the sunken ship and ask “What does this vaingloriousness down here?” Rather than associating the ship with splendor, or the wreck with tragedy, the fish perceive both glamorous ship and disastrous collision as products of the same “vaingloriousness,” the human pride which justified such an extravagant vessel, and which assumed it was unsinkable. Hardy critiques this human self-regard by suggesting that it is ultimately misguided, as it fails to perceive that all human accomplishments are ultimately subject to the power of fate.
Cynical View of Marriage and Love
Throughout the “The Convergence of the Twain,” Hardy employs an extended metaphor in which the Titanic is portrayed as a bride, and the ship as its groom. On one hand, this metaphor suggests that the collision was less tragic than an inevitable, even right and lawful, “consummation” between two beings destined for one another. On the other hand, portraying the tragic sinking of the Titanic as akin to a marriage also suggests a negative view of marriage overall. In this poem, love and sexuality are portrayed as controlled by fate, rather than desire, and the eventual meeting of two lovers not as a beautiful moment, but rather as a tragic or disastrous one. The poem seems to suggest that marriage poses a threat to the individual integrity of both parties, but it also casts marriage as an inevitability dictated by fate, which hence cannot be avoided.
