Pope's physical appearance shaped his poetry, he continuously seems to find, create and express the beautiful -"The Rival of his beams"-and wanting, as with his own 4 foot 6 inch frame, to rectify the disfigurement, it is with this determination that Pope aims to transform the "deformity" into a reconfigured power within his literature; cooling hot tempers and encouraging his friends to laugh at their own folly
Pope's main success in portraying both gentle ridicule and soft condemnation is through the genre of the mock epic, this does not mock the form itself but "mocks" the society in it's very failure to rise to epic standards, exposing it's pettiness by casting it against the grandeur of the tradition epic subjects and bravery and fortitude of epic heroes; The ritual of a real sacrifice is transplanted to a dressing table and the altar of love. "The inferior Priestless, at her altar side, Trembling, begins the sacred Rites of Pride." .
Pope's continuous mock-heroic treatment in Rape of the Lock combines both the "affection" and "disarray", Mack describes, into the undercurrent of his writings; it underscores the ridiculousness of society in which values lose all proportion and trivia is handled with gravity that ought to be accorded to truly important issues, such as the lack of food to many opposed to the lack of hair to one! Mack obviously views the society on display as one that fails to distinguish between things that matter and things that do not; this point s highlighted through; "Not louder shrieks to pitying heav"n are cast, when the husbands or when lap dogs breathe their last". Pope here is showing the lack of differentially of importance amongst possessions, a loss is a loss, whether it be a lifelong partner or a furry friend. Pope's poem mocks the men of society by showing them as unworthy forms through comparing them to the more heroic culture. It seems that none of the characters and therefore society itself, are real.