Donne's Comparisons With Death example essay topic

John Donne's Death, Be Not Proud, and Marianne Moore's Poetry, although both placed in the poetry section of Angles of Vision, they are very different forms of the genre, with Donne's deserving to be placed on a pedestal for all to see, while Moore should be buried six feet under without a headstone, but I would settle for its placement in a book of essays. Death, Be Not Proud, is written with a very macabre tone, which is very appropriate, as the poem depicts a man staring Death in the face and talking to him. The speaker, which could in fact be Donne, although there is no proof of that, uses all that hec an muster to convince all that Death is not to be feared or dreaded, but is in fact, nothing, because people through death find eternal life, which he states in line thirteen, saying One short sleep past, we wake eternally. Poetry has the setting of someone talking to a group rather informally. The tone is serious, yet comical as Moore's speaker, who is most likely Moore herself, tells her audience that she dislikes poetry, but because many poems are written by half-poets. She goes on to say if you demand... the raw material of poetry... which ison the other hand genuine, you are interested in poetry.

In Moore's final version of Poetry, she ends the poem after just three lines, which is might be more appropriate. Slocum 2 She only reiterates her first point in the next twenty-one lines, only running the reader around in circles. Although both authors care about the causes in which they wrote about, more grandiose subjects like the death of Death have been more stereotypically associated with poetry than the dislike and contempt of poetry. Poetry is written in prose and uses no set method of rhyme and meter, while Death, Be Not Proud is a sonnet; it consists of three quatrains and a couplet, uses iambic pentameter, and has a set rhyme scheme of abba abba c ddc ee. In Death, Be Not Proud, the idea of Death takin on human qualities is an excellent example of personification, for Death is not a person, and therefore, does not have pride, as the title and first line suggest and pleasure, which is mentioned in line six. The image of Death standing in front of you is also very effective.

By use of personification, one can see themselves talking to Death like the speaker in the poem. Another from of creative language Donne uses is the paradox. The speaker, as heis getting more incensed at Death for trying to take him home, he, in the last two lines, says we wake eternally, and death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. Death cannot die, it is illogical and impossible, but yet beautiful in an strange way. Having Death die is something that no one would have ordinarily thought about, but when they read about it, they suddenly go h. ..

Donne, along with the paradox, uses irony in line nine, saying that Death is a slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, when infact, Death is considered to be the ruler over all four groups. Slocum 3 Donne use of structure and order in the sestet of lines nine through fourteen is excellent, using the grandest comparison first, Thou are slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, then going downward in importance until finally saying in the final line, And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. Both poets use comparisons in their poems, but Donne's comparisons are more direct and can be more easily seen by the reader. Moore compares in line fourteen the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that feels the flea.

Donne, on the other hand, compares Death to rest and sleep in line six and Death's powers to poppy and charms in line eleven. Although thinking of a critic twitching his face like a horse conjures up an interesting image, Donne's comparisons with Death can link Death to things that are easily thought of in the human mind. From a literary standpoint, Moore comparisons in her poem are not in the same league as Donne's. John Donne's Death, Be Not Proud, or Holy Sonnet X, was one of the greatest works written by one of the greatest poets of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, while Marianne Moore's Poetry, written by one of the many contemporary American poets of the twentieth century, is a work that is structurally sound, but whose ideas belong in a different part of an English anthology.