In the poem, John Donne personifies death and addresses this “person,” using the poetic device called “apostrophe.” Donne throughout contrasts the mortal person and the immortal soul, using several paradoxes before arriving at the final one. He says to him that the people Death thinks he kills, he really does not; even more, Death cannot kill the speaker. Donne was a devout Catholic who later converted to Anglicanism and became an Anglican priest.
Those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
Death offers a relief through resting people’s bones: “soonest our best men with thee do go, / Rest of their bones….”
Death also should not be proud because its companions are “poison, war, and sickness.” Also, the rest that Death offers can be obtained from sleep or drugs (“poppy”).
Ultimately, the fact that “the soul’s delivery” is not in the hands of Death is the reason it should not be proud. Through faith, humans “wake eternally”; in salvation, they are past the reach of Death, which means it no longer exists: Death itself dies when people are saved.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44107/holy-sonnets-death-be-not-proud
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Please discuss the paradox in the last two lines of John Donne's sonnet "Death be not proud". Thank you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What is the theme of the chapter Lead?
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
The statement "Development policy needs to be about poor people, not just poor countries," carries a lot of baggage. Let's dis...
-
"Mistaken Identity" is an amusing anecdote recounted by the famous author Mark Twain about an experience he once had while traveli...
-
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
De Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman was enormously influential. We can see its influences on early English feminist Mary Woll...
-
As if Hamlet were not obsessed enough with death, his uncovering of the skull of Yorick, the court jester from his youth, really sets him of...
-
In both "Volar" and "A Wall of Fire Rising," the characters are impacted by their environments, and this is indeed refle...
No comments:
Post a Comment