The Flea John Donne

He justifies saving the flea’s life in line 11 by saying that now they are “more than married” through the flea. The speaker says that they are the flea, and the flea is their marriage bed and temple, therefore justifying premarital sex between the two. Now, making his plea, the speaker goes further by saying in line14 that “we are met,” meaning that they have already been sexually acquainted because of the mixing of blood between the two lovers inside of the flea’s body. The speaker then explains that if she were to kill the flea, she would be committing three sins against God in killing herself, him, and the flea.

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.

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.

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

In the final stanza, Donne’s poetic conceit is a whimsical poetic image of his feelings underlying the experience of love. A clear example of this is ‘She is all states, and all princes I;/Nothing else is;’ where Donne also uses trochaic and spondaic rhythm which emphasises the point phonetically. As in both poems, Donne’s temperament

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

Donne however, wrote “The Flea” in the first person giving the writing a comical twist as the speaker portrayed the aggressor, who metaphorically used the bite of the flea to defend his case to promote promiscuity. John Donne applied a consistent rhyme scheme using frequent assonance in each stanza which consisted of an iambic tetrameter followed by an iambic pentameter projecting the free willing mindset of the aggressor (Lorcher 2012). The speaker’s repeated use of ‘mark’ and ‘suck’ rhetorically reinforced the strength of his persuasiveness (Lorcher

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

He takes it a step further by stating that in the flea they “yea more than married are” (2.1). It is one thing to note that a flea contains two individuals’ blood, but to say that this union is greater than marriage is very extreme. Yet Donne executes this unlikely comparison with the utmost confidence, creating a surprisingly poignant argument. When the speaker says “though parents grudge,” he acknowledges that the woman’s parents (and society in general) would show great disapproval for such behavior (2.5). However, he replies that they are “cloistered in these walls of jet” (2.6). He describes their blood as secluded within the flea to remind his lady that they are also far away from any condemning parents. When the lady threatens to kill the flea, the speaker shows his opposition when he states “And sacrilege, three sins in killing three” (2.9). Once again, it seems strange to jump to the defense of a bothersome insect, but when we consider the flea as two lovers and the chamber that houses them it becomes more rational.

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.

    John Donne, a member of metaphysical school in the Seventeenth century, exhibited his brilliant talent in poetry. In "The Flea," he showed the passion to his mistress via persuasive attitude. The tone might straightforwardly create playfulness or sinfulness; yet, the poem contains none of either. What impress readers most is situation and device. The situation between the speaker and the audience is persuasion, love or marriage. As to device, the notable parts are diction and rhetoric skills. Furthermore, unique characteristics of this poem are also an important element of his persuasive tone.

The Flea: How poetic form shapes poetic meaning A Twisted Love Story Told by John Donne John Donne uses internal and external efforts to shape the poem’s meaning. He uses a precise rhyme scheme that is parallel with his arguments and ideas. His work seems effortless from the reader’s perspective. In each stanza, he switches his focus back and forth in a consistent pattern.

The Flea is a seductive poem which is written by John Donne during 1600s. In this poem, Donne presents flea to his lover as a symbol of their metaphysical relationship. The poem contains 3 stanzas of nine lines each. The rhyme scheme of the poem is AABBCCDDD which is three couplets and tercet. Each of these stanzas discuss three separate arguments from the speaker to his mistress. Donne uses images, metaphor and persuasive method to convince his lover to have premarital sex. He tries hard to pull her thoughts in his way of thinking. The speaker is developing argument to fulfill his desire for premarital sex thats why he uses flea as an analogy for their metaphysical relationship.

In the second stanza, Donne goes on to make the point that the flea is