Pope wrote “An Essay on Man” as both a philosophical essay and lyric poem. He uses the heroic couplet to express abstract ideas about human nature, society, and God. In a heroic couplet, each pair of two lines perfectly rhymes, and each line is written in iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter is a meter where each line has ten syllables or beats (or five “feet”), and each beat consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Iambic pentameter is one of the most popular metrical forms from this era. Many poets wrote epics of the past in iambic pentameter, which is how the form came to be known as the “heroic” couplet.

The rhyme scheme throughout Pope’s poem is AABBCCDD, with every two lines a perfect, closed rhyme. Pope also uses enjambment, or the continuation of a sentence beyond the end of a line. The sections are called epistles, or letters. They are all addressed to Henry St. John, Pope’s close friend and philosophical inspiration. Each epistle focuses on a single topic, with each broken up into sections focusing on one sub-topic.