Analysis of the Flea by John Donne and Last Night by Sharon Olds - Essay Example

Comparative Analysis of “The Flea” by John Donne and “Last Night” by Sharon Olds In the creations “The Flea” by John Donne and “Last Night” by Sharon Olds, both speakers may be perceived to exude an acute degree of sensual affection toward their love interests for whom the romantic yet somewhat erotic intentions are meant, as exhibited through the choice of delicate words and the flow of emotionality in second person viewpoint with which they are addressed. While Olds’ poem appears in free verse form, quite metrically and rhythmically flexible, Donne’s piece conveys its substance in an iambic meter with couplets bearing the rhyme scheme of AABBCCDDD. By characterizing the situation each is confronted with, the speakers manage to depict the meaning of love and intimacy with their respective lovers and the insights they have of these themes in the stimulating language of passion, filled with thematic symbols and images. At the onset of “The Flea”, the passionate man who sounds as though he were relishing the state of aggressive youth expresses “Mark but this flea, and mark in this, / How little that which thou deniest me is; / It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, / And in this flea our two bloods mingled be”. ‘Flea’ plays an essential role from the beginning as he makes use of it to fill in the void between him and the woman of his dreams just nearby for the bite of the flea, being infectious as it may seem by nature, serves to open up a sign of connection. Since the flea dips from one blood onto the next, it comes with ease to imagine how life may be upon another though this is too subtle a case herein, as the man is caught in desperately trying to convince his love to agree on accepting him into an intimate bond. He may be felt with a consuming level of desire in the manner by which he utters the phrases ‘sucked me’ and ‘sucks thee’ so that the reader is tickled into a playful thought of love-making. The male speaker proceeds to explicate in the second stanza: “Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare, / Where we almost, nay more than married are. / This flea is you and I, and this / Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is”. In this part, the flea is made to symbolize an embodiment that holds them as one and out of such tiny creature, the man constructs an impossibly larger world, signifying the flea in a metaphor with ‘marriage bed’ and ‘marriage temple’. Apparently, by opting for the word ‘marriage’ to be a common modifier on bed and temple, he alludes that he is not merely flirting with the woman for whom he feels deeply and madly at the moment. He wants her to understand that he considers her seriously and hopes to secure for her a solid foundation of love in the future. On the other hand, the female protagonist in “Last Night” initiates with: “The next day, I am almost afraid. / Love? It was more like dragonflies / in the sun, 100 degrees at noon, / the ends of their abdomens stuck together”. It would readily occur to the reading audience that the absence of love is more poignant than everything else that has taken place in the evening prior, as the questioning itself delivers a tone of regret which the seemingly frustrated woman illustrates further on confessing: “I / close my eyes when I remember. I hardly / knew myself, like something twisting and / twisting out of a chrysalis, / enormous, without language, all / head, all shut eyes”. Mentioning ‘abdomens stuck together’, ‘twisting’, and ‘shut eyes’ altogether communicates her idea of pain or something too unpleasant by experience, particularly when she projects it explicitly via details in the middle portion of the piece. Her disappointments are evident in querying “Did you know? No kiss, / no tenderness” where she adds “more like killing, death-grip / holding to life, genitals / like violent hands clasped tight”. Nowhere would this statement be found with a hint of gentle affection for after the narrator’s description, a brutal scenario pops to mind based on the consecutive similes employed with rich imagery of ugliness as she compares ‘genitals’ with ‘hands’ that are empty of caresses and are instead stiff with perils they could possibly create. One may necessarily ask, is the woman being taken against her will? Towards the end, however, she claims “you secured me in your arms till I slept -- / that was love, and we woke in the morning / clasped, fragrant, buoyant, that was / the morning after love”. To imagine, she could be a prostitute for that matter or the type who lives a dull, mundane life of a wife who performs the duty of responding to the sexual needs of her husband despite the truth that she is already worn out yet is unable to channel the sentiment. In any case, she herself overlooks the point of realization as the narrative of “Last Night” finds her forgiving and still in belief of love. Owing to the subject and literary fashion that facilitates the rationalization applied in each principal character, one gradually comprehends how the male speaker is either similar with or different from his female counterpart. At one stage, both of them share an equal intensity of sensationalizing the individual contents of well-being in reference to their notions and encounter of love and sensuality. Nevertheless, the woman in “Last Night” has had physical intercourse with her partner long before she sees disillusionment with love whereas the young man in “The Flea”, having no actual physical contact, obtains consolation with the knowledge that the blood of his beloved is linked to his at least, via the presence of a sucking organism. Looking content in the abstract or that which has not yet transpired, the man revels with optimism “Yet this enjoys before it woo, / And pampered swells with one blood made of two, / And this, alas, is more than we would do”, even if he is not met with concrete attachments at the time. On the contrary, the woman impresses upon a view of pessimism with her level of maturity especially with the lines “I groan to remember it, and when we started / to die, then I refuse to remember, the way a drunkard forgets.” Having known much about life and love in a society where she is treated under rigid morals, she struggles to hold perception of beauty from the inside with a sense of adventure, unlike the man whose youth engages him to explore on inventive thoughts as visualizing romance with a flea under control. Moreover, both may be argued to have had acquired misfortunes from their lovers in the sense that one manifests cruelty during sex while the other brings across an attitude of indifference or lack of sensibility by deciding to kill the flea which her lover profoundly regards. Donne’s “The Flea” (16th – 17th century) lived at a time that is about some three hundred years from Olds’ “Last Night” (20th century) but the striking resemblances in theme and construction justify a kind of human nature that is ever present in at any period in history. The man in Donne’s work and the woman in Olds’ craft are individuals who reflect the different socio-cultural influences of their authors along with the distinct writing styles that the poets preferred yet, despite all these, the concept of love and the sensuous experience of affectations which they portray possess common attributes that majority can very well relate to. Works Cited Read More