Summary Of Donne's The Flea

On the surface, John Donne’s poem “The Flea” dramatizes the conflict between two people on the issue of premarital sex, however, under the surface, the poem uses religious imagery to seduce the woman into having sex. The speaker in this poem is a man, who is strategically trying to convince a woman to have premarital sex with him through the conceit based on a flea, however, the coy lady has thus far yielded to his lustful desires. The speaker’s argument has the form of logic, which contradicts to its outrageous content.

As the girl threatens to kill the flea, the speaker begs her to stop. He states that all three of their lives are in this flea, and that through the blood of the flea he and her are already married. If the girl were to kill the flea, he feels that it would be the equivalent of murdering all three of them. The speaker is desperately trying to manipulate the girls actions too his advantage. Donne uses more metaphors too twist his words into a more convincing argument.

“And I their Mapp, who lie Flat on this bed”. He describes his body as a map, a metaphor for his life being a journey, which his doctors attempt to read in order to discover his illness and his suffering and ultimately where his journey ends. In reference to Cartography, Donne refers to bearings, using the imagery of a map to point out that what we see on the western edge of a flat map is also to be found on the eastern edge, showing that he believes life and death are connected to each other. In the final stanza, Donne feels joy at the though of death as he feels he will recover his identity by reuniting with the lord. In the final stanza, he returns to the idea of the first stanza, summing up the poem’s central message with the use of a paradox. “Therefore that he may raise the Lord throws down.” This paradox shows that to rise up to heaven, one must be thrown “down” by death, so therefore one must suffer to be accepted and united in a place where one’s identity is established. His extreme suffering has purged and prepared him for paradise.

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

Written during the 17th century, John Donne utilizes an unconventional genre in his poem, demeaning and objectifying the female sex. A common motif in poems of the Renaissance, Donne uses a flea as a metaphorical comparison to sexual intercourse and the eternal bind between man and woman. Illustrated throughout the poem, Donne

that this act of the flea having both of their blood in its body is

Throughout the poem, Donne emphasizes a man’s desire and how he is going to go about achieving that strong internal desire, but fails to touch on the other half: what exactly the woman wants. During the poem we realize that the woman does not actually want to have intercourse with the man. This can be seen when she tries to kill the flea for the first time but is stopped by the man. “Though use make you apt to kill me, /Let not

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 enjoys the blood and so does the man enjoy foreplay. The pamper'd swells could be that of sexual organs before sex and yet, because that is not happening, the flea is having a better time at the moment than he is, by sucking their blood. I think that by using this comparison, John Donne is being very intellectual and at this point I feel he may win his argument. The second stanza, John Donne becomes weaker as the girl starts to defend herself and he tries to convey his love for her.

He goes on to suggest that, when she has killed the flea that holds blood, which in this case is considered as ?life?, from both him and her, that the blood lost had not weakened them (?Find?st not thyself, nor me the weaker now?) and she had not lost any honour. Therefore, with these points considered, the blood she would lose to him would not make her weaker and she would not lose any honour, ?Just so much honour, when thou yield?st to me/ Will waste, as this flea?s death took life from thee?. To some extent, both poets express a way in which they will consummate or have consummated their mistress. Marvell suggests that they should ?roll all their strength and all/ Their sweetness into one ball? and ?tear? their pleasures ?with rough strife/ Through the iron gates of life.? Whereas Marvell explains the consummation as aggressive, sensual and romantic, Donne uses the flea, a very insignificant, unromantic creature, to imply sexual intercourse, ?and in this flee, our two bloods mingled be.?

"¡¥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]

The tone of the male speaker seems to come off like a child pouting and having an attitude by not getting a toy he wanted. Although this poem portrays John Donne as a playboy and a flirt, later in life he turned very religious about love and God. Donne’s writing in this poem holds a hidden religious undertone because Donne believed the human body was a needed vessel to experience true emotional love on a spiritual level (Fuller 13). Another example of religion in “The Flea” is that the death of the flea is like the crucifixion of Jesus Christ because both are innocent when killed and no honor is lost (Fuller

The theme of a story can often directly relate to the title of the text, but sometimes the true meaning of the story hides in between the lines of the poem. Donne utilized this technique in “The Ecstasy” to justify the meaning of his poem, while the text presents a slightly different idea. According to the an online encyclopedia, the “title of the poem refers not to the modern meaning of the word ecstasy—rapture or delight, especially of a sexual nature—but rather to a Renaissance-era meaning that describes the movement of the soul outside of the body” (Overview: The Ecstasy). This explains the denotation that the text presents and the importance that the title has towards Donne’s theme of spiritual love. The term “ecstasy,” in modern language, relates to the idea of physical excitement or satisfaction. However, the way Donne uses it in his work is through the consideration of two souls and the journey to true love.

John Donne has written the two poem’s; “The Flea” and “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”. The main theme of both of these poems are love. Donne wrote “The Flea” with a lustful view. The male character in the poem desired nothing more than sexual pleasure from the women he “loved”. But this immature perspective of love changed in “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”. Donne writes about spiritual love that transcends physical separation. In “The Flea” it is written “How little that which thou deniest me is / It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee / And in this flea our two bloods mingled be / Thou know'st that this cannot be said / A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead”, (“The Flea”, 2-6). Donne is trying to say that if the blood of the two