“What is human happiness? The prize for which all strive, and so few obtain.” This quote from William Hill Brown exemplifies one of the tones in The Power of Sympathy. Throughout the book, Thomas Harrington, the main character, falls in love with Harriot Fawcett, his sister, yet neither of them knows about their sibling relation. Once they find out about their relation, horror strikes them, but they find it hard to dismiss their love. In The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown, Brown creates a bitter tone by using imagery, perspective, and details when Thomas writes to his best friend, Jack Worthy about his lack of happiness and his love affair with Harriot in Letter XLVI. Brown uses imagery in this letter to show Thomas chase after love…show more content… Brown uses a unique tacit to express the feelings going through Thomas and Harriot in that time. Elizabeth Dill, a literary critic, praises Brown’s technique when she writes, “The Power of Sympathy enhances our understanding of deep, tragic romance most successfully when ‘conflicting passions’ find expression not in clarity but in ambiguous silence. Whatever it is that constitutes love, this anti-novel tells us by not telling us at all” (13). Instead of Brown outright telling his readers what happened in the confrontation he just puts the two characters into a silence where they express their emotions through their actions by using imagery. An example of this happens when Brown writes, “Here was all the horror of conflicting passions, expressed by gloomy silence- by stifles cries- by convulsions- by sudden floods of tears” (68). These details of their actions speak more of the horror they experience than any dialogue can. Thomas also feels conflicted on what to do with Harriot and these details change Thomas’s perspective of the world. His bitterness shows through this conflict, which the details of the confrontation influences though some may argue that the details show more of a melancholy