Subsequent events of the poem parody the epic structure in the similar way.

The opening invocation, the description of the heroines toilet, the journey to Hampton Court , the game of ombre magnified into a pitched battle all lead up to the moment when the peer produces the fatal pair of scissors, but the action of the mortals was not enough. Pope knew that in true epics the affairs of men were aided or thwarted by the Heavenly Powers. He, therefore, added the bodies of the supernatural beings sylphs, gnomes, nymphs and salamanders as agents in the story. The gods of the epic are heroic beings, but popes deities are tiny. Pope describes the diminutive gods of the poem as the light militia of the lower sky. Belinda screams like the Homeric poems and dashed like the characters of the great epics, but she is a mere slip of a girl. This is the ironic contrast. We find a battle drawn to combat like the Greek warriors. But it is only a game of cards on a dressing table. We find a supernatural being who threatens his inferiors with torture. But it is a Sylph, not Jove. The poem contains parodies of Homer, Virgil, Ariosto, Spenser and Milton as well as reminiscences of Catallus, Ovid and the Bible. There are several instances of Burlesque-treatment. There is Belindas voyage to Hampton Court which suggests the voyage of Aeneas up to the Tiber in Virgil. There is a coffee party which is a parody of the meals frequency described in Homer. The combat at the end recalls the fighting which is found anywhere in the ancient epics. The Cave of Spleen is a parody of an allegorical picture, examples of which may be found in poets like Spenser. Just before the cutting of the lock, when Ariel searches out the close recess of the virgins thoughts. There he finds an earthly lover lurking in her heart, and Pope tells us that Ariel retires with a sigh, resigned to fate. This situation echoes the moment in Paradise Lost when after the fall of Adam and Eve, the Angles of God retire mute and sad to heaven. The angles could have protected Adam and Even against Satan, but mans own free choice of will they are as helpless as Ariel and his comrades are in the face of Belindas free choice of earthly lover. An outstanding mock-heroic in the poem is the comparison between arming of an epic hero and Belindas dressing herself and using cosmetics in order to kill. Pope describes a society-lady in terms that would suit the arming of a warrior like Achilles. The Rape of the Lock is a poem ridiculing the fashionable world of Popes day. But there are several occasions when we feel that the epic world of homer and Virgil has in this poem been scaled down, wittily and affectionately, to admit the coffee-table and the fashionable ladys bed-chamber. Supernatural Machinery: Pope gives a mock dignity to the action of the Rape of the Lock by the use of machinery of sylphs and gnomes. Taken from the Rosicrucian cult, which Bayle had described as the sect of mountebanks, the sylphs and gnomes reduce the divine and demonic agents of an epic poem to their diminutive status. Unlike the deities of the epics, who act guardian agents of the epic heroes, Belindas guardian sylph, Ariel is an ineffectual/airy being who deserts her at the most critical moment. The supernatural machinery of the poem thus provides a gentle mockery of the epic deities and increases the charm of the poem as a mock-heroic.