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Theme Of Holy Sonnet 14

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John Donne in his sonnet, “Holy Sonnet 14” intricately uses various poetic techniques and meters in order to masterfully exemplify vivid imagery to the readers. He also uses many similes to allude the readers into having both an imaginary and a realistic perception while reading the poem. All of these aspect help with appreciating the thematic content of the poem. The tone of the poem is one of anger and resentment, but also of seeking redemption and forgiveness. The poet who is the main character in the sonnet is having a direct conversation with the divine, the trinity (three person’d God), or the father, son and the holy spirit. The author demands God to listen to his plea, almost as if he has been done wrong or been treated unjustly. He opens with the word “Batter”, which itself exemplifies forceful or demanding attitude. The author goes on to using aggressive verb such as “break”, “blow” and “burn” instead of gentle verbs such as “knock”, “breath” or “shine”. This again shows the author wants the extreme form of immediate treatment, not just gentle cures. These words are meant to be figurative as the author wants to show the desperation he is in for God to enter his soul or heart. He does not want his heart to be literally mend, but he desires his heart to be brand new or in other words he wants a new start in life. The poem itself because of starting in an iambic pentameter, gets the reader to have stress on more of the powerful action words (rise, stand) to put more emphasis on them in order to contribute to the overarching tone of the whole poem. The poems main theme centers around the concept of free will, love, violence and seduction. The author in the beginning of lines 8-10 talks about free will in terms of reason. He blames his ability to reason for going against God. Since God gave people consciousness to make their own decisions and to decide their own fate, the author suggest it should be God’s fault that he has been loosing faith in him (weak or untrue). The readers can question themselves, since everyone’s fate is after all set by God, are there actually free will? The author clears out that dilemma and blames a little more onto himself and his inability to go towards the right direction

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