Poetry Comparison: John Donnes The Fle and Death Be Not Proud - Essay Example

?Poetry Comparison: John Donne’s “The Flea” and “Death Be Not Proud” With the possible exceptions of John Milton and Edmund Spenser, John Donne has been called the greatest Renaissance writer of all time as far as non-dramatic verse is concerned. Donne’s writing style has been described by one admirer as “very transcendent” (Oliver p. vii) and his brand of poetry characterized as metaphysical because of their reliance on a philosophical approach of expression rather than on the use of pure poetic language (Matheikal p. 1). Metaphysical poetry became popular in the 17th century and was a term associated with English poets such as Donne, George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, among others, and came to label a class of poetry which largely employs “conceit” (a figure of speech that uses unusual and paradoxical images) (Metaphysical Poets 1). Illustrative of this literary style is Donne’s “The Flea” and “Death Be Not Proud.” The former is an erotic, but humorous, poem where the speaker seduces a woman into engaging in sexual intimacy with him, not through flattery and the usual language of seduction, but by employing the unlikely image of a flea as an allegorical argument for its harmlessness. The latter poem, on the other hand, is a direct call by the author on Death to be less arrogant because it is not as powerful and invincible as it thinks. This is because, according to him, a person’s demise is not purely its will and handiwork considering that fate, third parties and other circumstances has to intervene in the process. Although the themes of the two seem worlds apart, i.e. seduction in “The Flea” and death in “Death, Be Not Proud,” both poems heavily employ various figurative languages to trivialize certain traditional beliefs: that an unmarried woman should keep her virtue before marriage in the first, and; that death is not as powerful and to be feared as people think it is, in the latter. The poem “The Flea” was written in 1630 (Brackett 179), which was evidently a period before the dawn of sexual revolution when premarital sex was still considered a social and moral taboo. In trying to seduce the lady in this poem, the speaker employs the trick of making it appear that engaging in it is harmless and not a big deal. To achieve this, the speaker creates a parallelism between a blood-sucking flea that has bitten them both and the act of engaging in the sexual act. This parallelism necessarily entails the use of metaphor as a literary device in the poem making it more interesting because of the unlikely, and laughter-provoking, comparison between a flea and the sexual act. Metaphor is defined as “the application of name or descriptive term to an object which is not literally applicable” (Eaglestone 93) and in “The Flea” this literary device is evident. In the second stanza of the poem, for example, the speaker clearly compares the flea to a marriage bed. He does this for the purpose of driving home the point that having sex is not a big deal because his and the lady’s union has already been accomplished in the body of the flea after it has bitten and sucked blood from out both their bodies. Thus: This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is (Donne 1630). Hyperbole is also a persistent element in the poem and its function here is to dramatize the point of the speaker that having sex should not be taken by the lady as something dishonorable or sinful. In the last three lines of the second stanza, for example, the speaker warns the lady that killing the flea is tantamount to the murder of three beings: the flea; the lady, and; the speaker. And when the lady cannot be stopped, he accuses her of “purpling thy nail in blood of innocence,” which is a metaphor for murder and a clear exaggeration and use of hyperbole as a literary device. Finally, the speaker latches on to the justification of the lady in killing the flea, viz. it was nothing to be worried about as no moral liability is attached to the act, by pointing out that the same reason is just as applicable if she concedes to having sex with him – it is just as insignificant and of no consequence as taking the life of a flea. As can be seen, Donne accomplishes his purpose by using a lot of metaphors and hyperbole. Donne’s other poem “Death, Be Not Proud,” is also an attempt to belittle the perception of most people that death is powerful because it has control over men’s life. The speaker tries to dismiss and reverse this point of view by pointing out that death actually is merely a slave and will in the end be totally banished itself. To accomplish the dismissal of death as nothing extraordinary, Donne reduces death into an animate object to give it feeling, destructibility and even mortality. He does this mainly through the combined process of personification, hyperbole and paradox. Personification is the attribution of human traits to an inanimate object; hyperbole is simply gross exaggeration, and; paradox is a statement that contradicts logic or common knowledge (Hipkiss 83-87). The first lines of the poem show that the author has attributed certain human traits to death, when in fact death is not an animate object. Thus, Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me (Donne 1610). As can be seen from foregoing cited passage of the poem, the use of personification here is necessary and serves the purpose of allowing the author to dismiss death as nothing more than a mere being – limited and imperfect. Had this literary device not employed, there is no way that death can be reduced to the same level as ordinary mortals. Death is being addressed - as if it can hear- and described as “proud,” “mighty and dreadful” and finally, taunted as powerless to kill the speaker. To further diminish death’s power over men, the author further accuses death of being delusional and his reputation merely a product of hype. This hyped reputation, according to the speaker, consists only of strong images, which when scrutinized are merely representative of rest and sleep and are hardly reasons to evoke fear or pride because “poppies and charmes” can do the same trick (Bloom, p. 95). To add insult to injury, the 6th line compares death to a slave, which is metaphorical, because it is dependent on “fate, chance, kings and desperate men, And dost with poison, war and sickness dwell” to actually accomplish its purpose. Finally, Donne winds up with a paradoxical line, “Death thou shall die” (Donne 1610) - an equation that simply defies logic because how can death die? Donne’s “The Flea” and “Death, Be Not Proud” are two poems that attempt to diminish the worth of traditional beliefs that people during his time either gives so much value or fear most. In the olden days, a woman who keeps her virtue are regarded with admiration and honor, and death presumably, just like in the present times, was feared for its power to end one’s life on earth. “The Flea” is about the seduction of a woman who seems steadfast in keeping her virtue and “Death, Be Not Proud” is the exposition and denunciation of death as nothing more than a powerless slave. In both these poems, Donne attempts to trivialize the common perceptions about a woman’s virtue and death by presenting strong arguments contradicting such perceptions: in the case of the former by humorously associating it to a blood-sucking flea and in the latter case by dismissing it as a delusional and proud being who is actually a mere slave of chance and other circumstances. Donne accomplishes his goals of dismissing and trivializing these traditional images by employing a host of literary devices such as metaphors, hyperbole, personification and paradox to highlight certain images that either proves a point or dismisses another and at the same time gain the undivided attention of the reader. Works Cited Donne, John. Death, Be Not Proud. 1610. Donne, John. The Flea, 1630. Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I. E. K. Chambers, ed.London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. Hipskiss, Robert. Semantics: Defining the Discipline. Routledge, 1995. Matheikal, Tomichan. English poetry: from John Donne to Ted Hughes. Atlantic Publishers & Dist, 2001. Metaphysical Poets. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, 2011. Oliver, Paul (ed.) John Donne: Selected Letters. Routledge, 2002. Pebworth, Ted-Larry. John Donne, Coterie Poetry, and Text as Performance. Studies in English Literature (Rice), Winter89, Vol. 29(1). Read More