The comparison of sex to a flea is quite the unexpected plot of a love poem, but John Donne’s “The Flea” is not the usual love poem. In the poem, the speaker addresses a lady who he is attempting to convince to participate in unnamed sexual actions with him. She, apparently sticking to the appropriate tradition of her time by maintaining her virginity, cannot be convinced. The speaker uses ridiculous arguments, which he switches stance on a couple of times, and the device of conceit,or an exaggerated metaphor, to explain the need for the woman to take part in his desires. The speaker begins his argument by drawing the attention of the lady to the flea. He tells her to “mark,” or notice, the flea (line 1). He then uses the size of the flea to …show more content…
Seeing that his previous argument had no effect on the lady, the speaker tries a new approach. The speaker says, “Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,” delaying the death of the flea and telling the woman if she kills the flea, she will be killing the both of them as well (line 10). He is so desperate to be with her that he will do whatever it takes to convince her. At this point in the poem, he begins giving the impression that the mixture of their bodily fluids within the tiny flea is sacred. In fact, he says that in the body of the flea, they are “more than married” (line 11). He even says that the great thing about the mixture of their blood inside the tiny body of the flea is that no one can do anything about it: “Though parents grudge, and you, w’are met,/And cloister’d in these living walls of jet” (lines 14-15). The speaker has, at the drop of a hat, completely turned his argument around. He now makes this out to be the biggest deal, even telling the woman that the flea “is you and I” and that killing it would be “sacrilege” (line 12, 18). But even with the speaker’s twisted logic at work, the lady is just as persistently sticking to her morals and denying the speaker his …show more content…
She then claims that she “find’st not [her]self, nor [him] the weaker now” (line 24). Basically, she has disproved the speaker’s theory of their figurative lives within the flea. The speaker, still determined to change the woman’s mind, just decides to use this to his advantage. Once again, changing his argument, he claims that the flea is guilty of nothing and that she thinks she has “triumph’st” (line 23). If this is so, he argues that what the flea has done is nothing, then really, she should not fear any sexual contact with him because this sexual contact would also be nothing. He claims that her reluctance is solely based on “false fears” (line 25). If she would just give up her virginity to him, yes, it is possible her honor “will waste”, but that honor is worthless, just as the life of the flea (line 27). Now that the speaker is back to his “no big deal” argument, he insists she would do no more harm to herself than she did when she killed the flea (line 27). Considering the ridiculously stretched logic used in the speaker’s arguments, one can reasonably assume that he never convinced the woman to take part in his sexual wants. It is clear that he never provided strong enough evidence to change her mind, and it is hard to believe that the speaker could have been expected to be taken seriously with his poor justifications. Though he
The third stanza is the inevitable ?fall from grace? as our speaker has finally ?taken off the gloves? and resorts to the vengeance of cold steel. The speaker utters one last phrase of motivation as he/she eerily takes pleasure in holding the tool of his nemesis? destruction. ?The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling to the feel of the .22, the bullets? neat noses.? The killer now takes a moment to lament on his/her course of action, acknowledging that her pacifism is a thing of the past; that he/she was once comparable to Darwin and his pension for non-violence. However, this does little to dissuade he/she from swiftly taking the life of the pests. ?I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing, now drew a bead on the little woodchuck?s face. He died down in the everbearing roses.? This stanza marked the turning point of the narrative as our speaker has been pushed beyond their boundaries into an unfamiliar realm of pleasure. A side of them has been exposed that has remained dormant for what appears to be the duration of their life. It is now a newfound sensation that has thrilled them beyond
In the first stanza, the speaker wants his beloved lady to observe a flea and not think of anything else as he delivers his argument. A flea bites the speaker and his beloved causing their blood to mix,
Even after the girl kills the flea by “purpling thy naile”, the speaker asks the girl how she could have found the flea guilty besides that he sucked her blood. He then points out that even after killing the flea, neither her nor him has become weaker because of it. So again he manages to use the girls actions to his advantage by saying that by killing the flea and spilling innocent blood of all three of them, she has essentially done the same thing as losing her virginity, and has lost nothing. Because of this, he continues to press on with his argument. Telling her how her fears are unnecessary, and that she would lose just as much honor as when she killed the flea as when she gave herself to him.
be seen by the way he uses words like “Had we” and “we would”. This is
The author uses comical comparisons to a leg of lamb and a horse to clearly let us sense how silly Gillian feels. It makes us question why we would want to go so far as to be so uncomfortable, feels so ridiculous, just to try to resemble an inaccessible ideal, and to gain the respect and love of others.
John Donne’s poems are similar in their content. They usually point out at same topics like love, lust, sex and religion; only they are dissimilar in the feelings they express. These subjects reflect the different stages of his life: the lust of his youth, the love of his married middle age, and the piety of the latter part of his life. His poem,’ The Flea’ represents the restless feeling of lust during his youthful days but it comes together with a true respect for women through the metaphysical conceit of the flea as a church in the rhythm of the sexual act.
He uses the flea as an excuse for marriage and that they are now permitted to have sex. Out of desperation Donne shifts to a more religiously point of view by saying, “And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three.” (Line 18) This means that if the woman kills the flea, she is killing the flea, him, herself, and God. However, the women squashes the flea along with his argument and Donne is left with one final go at convincing the woman. The final stanza of the poem expresses his sheer desperation to have sex with the woman as he deviates to using a lenient approach. He blames her not for killing the flea, but says that her act did not damage her honour in any way, and that she should still “yeeld’st to mee” (Line 26), or should still sleep with him. The content of The Flea demonstrates the exact sexist attitude that John Donne possessed when he wrote his early love poems. Likewise, the same desire for physical pleasure can be seen in the poem The Sunne Rising. This poem encompasses Donne’s ignorance of his surroundings and his obsession for sexual pleasure. Throughout the poem he attacks and challenges the sun with contempt, and does so by personifying it. He is obviously disturbed and troubled by the “unruly Sunne” (Line 1) and tells
Following a unique poetic language of the Renaissance, John Donne's The Flea' is a poem illustrating the metaphor of a flea to represent the sexual act and relations between a man and woman. Portrayed through language, imagery, and structure John Donne's poem is one of conceit and seduction, as the speaker (assumed to be a man) follows a consistent pattern of persuasion to have premarital sex with a woman.
While the Smolinsky family is not literally “hanging on Bessie’s neck for her wages”, this displays to the reader how desperation affected them. The metaphor acts as a bridge between the reader and the event, therefore allowing them to feel the same worry that Sara harbors through the shared experience of “hanging” without support. It is important for the audience to relate to the characters, yet this cannot happen if the author’s portrayal gives little humanity to their characters. Hence, when Yezierska writes that financial help according to Sara and her family is a “stab into our burning shame”, it shows that despite any prior notions of poverty being an “ornament”, they still have human wants and needs. Moreover, it shows that her characters are not emotionless apathetic beings that live only on their faith; they too endure deviations from what is expected of them. At any rate, repeated similes have an analogous consequence on the reader's thoughts. Multiple comparisons within a small section of text compound the anxiety, bombarding the same heavy emotions that Sara feels onto the reader in a way that they can sympathize with her, and in turn, Yezierska herself. Altogether, these literary moves go further than simply entertaining the audience, but informing them about what the world was truly
In stanza four the pronoun “you” is introduce. We assume its Collin prior relationship, as its only stanza that doesn’t contains Collin pet analogy and first evidence contributing to the theme. The metaphor shift to abstract when Collin deny her worthiness and what she meant to his life. But, as he subtracted himself to the “combination”, he was able to discover her value rather measuring his spouse love and intimacy. Repetitions occur, such as “awkward and bewildering” to represent the time when his spouse was companion to him, but he couldn’t reciprocate those same nurturing feelings back to her. In addition, his spouse “held” him more than he ever did. He regrets it now when he is holding his dog but the dog is incapable to measure that same actions and words because of law of nature. The last stanza line, “..now we are both lost in strange and distant neighborhood.”, is another metaphor reference the way a lost dog might feel to his lost love that can’t ever be the same
Sex described in this poem is between two people who are not in love, and it’s vividly elaborated throughout the poem. Olds brings foreplay, tenderness, and
In the final stanza the woman kills the flea. Unsurprisingly, the very dramatic Donne labels the death as “cruel and sudden” (3.1). He goes on to say that she has “purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence” (3.2). What he means by this is that the flea has done nothing more than suck her blood, yet she has ended its life. Since the mingling of blood is representative of sex, it implies that the act of sex is
The Flea and To His Coy Mistress are two poems written by poets living during the Renaissance Period. To His Coy Mistress was written by Andrew Marvell and The Flea was written by John Donne. Both of these poets were well-educated 'metaphysical poets', and these poems illustrate metaphysical concerns, highly abstract and theoretical ideas, that the poets would have been interested in. Both poems are based around the same idea of trying to reason with a 'mistress' as to why they should give up their virginity to the poet.
"¡¥The Flea' seems particularly unerotic in character, extraordinarily preoccupied with ethical and social, particularly marital, matters¡K. but also transforms the sexual seduction lyric into a more serious persuasion to full affectionate and physical loving."iii[iii]
In the second stanza, Donne goes on to make the point that the flea is