“The Flea”, by John Donne is a raunchy romantic poem that explains the speakers unyielding love that is represented by an insect. Using the insect to seduce his beloved after they both get bitten by the insect. As the speaker seduces his beloved, he involves her beliefs and values, intending to get his way with her no matter what it takes. But she doesn’t give in to his manipulation.
As you read more deeply into the poem, we can also see the larger and symbolic meanings of this poem. For example the flea, sex, marriage, and religion. The flea is the main focus on of this poem, It’s size is considered small but it is large on the inside because it symbolizes their “marriage”. Since both of their bloods have been mingled, making the speaker seem desperate for her and continues to find a way to convince her. The audience will also get a sense the speaker’s character throughout the poem, he is confident, clever, charming, considerate, frustrated, and whiny.
Sex is the main focus for the speaker. In line seven, Donne writes, “ Yet this enjoys before it woo”, the flea is actually enjoying sucking her blood because that’s what flea’s do. All the speaker wants is to enjoy himself with her as much as the flea does when he sucks her blood. The speaker is very unreliable when it comes to love because that’s not what he’s looking for. If he was then he wouldn’t try to involve his beloved in premarital sex. He tries to convince her that she wouldn’t be committing a sinful act, and
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.
be seen by the way he uses words like “Had we” and “we would”. This is
As in the other stanzas, this arranges its four supporting arguments into three couplets and a triplet by rhyme. However, whereas the first stanza loosely held the ideas to couplets, the second shows more organization in thought. This further structure is necessary to support the conceit of the flea as a holy church. The support for this idea is arranged into the following four sub-argument: one, do not kill the flea, because we have conceived within it; two, thus, the flea is like a “marriage bed,” and by extension, a “marriage temple”; three, despite your parents’ and your concerns, that’s the way it is; and four, if you kill the flea, you commit three sins – killing me, killing yourself, and sacrilege by violating the sanctity of the marriage temple. Note that Donne does present an argument to seduce his beloved in this stanza. His words are filled solely with reverence and concern for the flea. Through this, we can see the earnestness and seriousness of the passion he has for his beloved: the sanctity of their relationship – even their surrogate relationship within the flea – is sacred to him.
The conceit in “The Flea” is between a flea and unrequited love in the physical aspect. The complexities of this young romance develop the speaker’s argument for a young women to sleep with him. The biting of the flea is compared to having sexual relations with the women. The speaker claims that the flea bite joins them together like sex. Thus, her preserved purity no longer exists because they now have shared the same fluids (blood) inside the flea. He compares the flea’s bite to the joining of souls such as the holy trinity. The speaker try to get the women to see how blown out of proportion her virginity really is and that not that big of a deal.
The use of connotative words in this piece is the foundation of this poem and it provides an idea of what this poem is going to be about. In the first stanza he describes the woman as “lovely in her bones,” showing that her beauty is more than skin deep comparing her virtues to a goddess of “only gods should speak.” In the second stanza, the reader can see and feel the love between the two people. The woman taught him how to "Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand," showing that she was the teacher in the relationship and taught him things he thought he never needed to know. The speaker shows how when they are together, she was “the sickle” and he was “the rake” showing that this woman taught him what love is.
The metaphor is further enforced in lines 8 and 9 when Donne illustrates the image of the swollen flea "pampered swells with one blood made of two" (line 8) introducing the image of a baby, and the idea of pregnancy. With the possible allusion of a pregnancy Donne is emphasizing that he is attempting to sleep with the woman. Thus, Donne continues to use the image of a flea to unconventionally simplify lovemaking. The absurdity of the poem is portrayed through the use of a flea to convince a woman into bed, when a flea would typically connote repulsiveness, dependency, and something ugly and simple, which mooches off of others. In the second stanza of the poem, the speaker continues to emphasize his conceit, although it has become clear that the woman wants to remove the flea from her body, and consequentially the relationship with the speaker. "Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare" (line 10), the speaker is now relying on guilt, persuading the woman to spare not only the life of the flea, however he goes as far as mentioning the lives of himself and the woman. Drawing a comparison once again to the act of love, the speaker mentions marriage, portraying that the flea has joined them eternally much like a marriage would. Marriage is a significant motif in the second stanza, which also relates to
The use of symbolism and imagery is beautifully orchestrated in a magnificent dance of emotion that is resonated throughout the poem. The two main ideas that are keen to resurface are that of personal growth and freedom. Furthermore, at first glimpse this can be seen as a simple poem about a women’s struggle with her counterpart. However, this meaning can be interpreted more profoundly than just the causality of a bad relationship.
The poem is structured as a sonnet which commonly expresses a theme of love throughout the lines. Also it is paired with the “ABAB” rhyme scheme to give an emotional view to the readers about the conflict he has. Also the sonnet and the rhyme scheme is a common usage of poem making and many people know what it is, so the poet uses this structure to let readers understand more easily and clearly. He also uses the “ABAB” scheme to separate parts that are important within themselves. In the first four lines, it talks about the poet himself and how much he tries to avoid the one she loves by “ hold my louring head so low”(Line 2). In the next four lines, it talks about the mouse and how its problems relates with the poet’s emotional pain. After that, the next four lines talks about the fly and how it relates with the author with his physical pain. Using these methods help the poet communicate with the readers easily.
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
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' 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 John Donne’s “Carpe Diem” poem, “The Flea,” he emphasizes his thoughts on current events happening within his time period across Europe. In this poem, Donne uses the image of the flea to represent a reckless and unforgiving passion for love. The insect is seen as guiltless for sucking the blood of whoever it wants within the lines “It suck’d me first, and now it sucks thee.” Here, the fact that the flea had such sexual freedom in its love life causes the reader to become envious. Donne’s main idea is to show the reader that they shouldn’t hold back their human passions, but instead they should seize them.
What I understood from both “The Flea” and “To His Coy Mistress” is that there are two speakers who are fancily saying how they wish to make love to the person who they are talking to in odd ways. Both of the poems relate in the personification of bugs taking away a woman’s purity. In “The Flea,” there is personification of the flea taking on multiple roles throughout the poem, but one role is “And this, alas, is more than we would do,” meaning the flea has brought together both of their blood, the closest they would ever be (Donne). While in “To His Coy Mistress,” there is the personification of worms: “then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity” (Marvell).
He enlightens us that when they have sex they will be pursuing time, instead of time pursuing them. This also alludes to the rhetorical statement, “use your time wisely”. Sometimes it is worth the risk and you do not want to miss out on the chance of a lifetime. The theme of this poem is clearly stated as telling your loved ones how much you love them and to never take them for granted. “Two hundred for each breast” illuminates the extent he would go just to admire his spouse. The affectionate the speaker wants to show his lover is physical love, not abstract love such as compliments and gifts. As the poem comes to an end, the irony sets in, yet in a nauseating message. The narrator states that if she does not lose her virginity to him, worms will devour her body and have sex with her. “Then worms shall try that long-preserved virginity.” The pressure the speaker puts on his lover makes me uncomfortable because it does not work like that in the real world. Overall, this poem opened my eyes to tell my loved ones how much I appreciate