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Argument's structure

Donne's Holy Sonnets: Death be Not Proud

Analysis by Kimbel, Sarah, and Shelby

Shifts to an Emotion-based Argument

  • Strong emotions are evoked from the audience
  • The comparisons and personification Donne uses in the latter half of the poem, such as "poison, war, and sickness" evoke strong negative emotions from the audience, another helpful strategy to achieve his purpose of degrading the fear surrounding the concept of mortality. Instead of fearing death for those reasons, readers are made to realize that those things are actually what make death pitiful and hard to respect.
  • Other important keys to Donne's emotion-based argument:
  • Compares Death to a Sleeping remedy, something that usually comforts people
  • Death is a positive thing because it sends souls of virtuous people to heaven: "And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery."
  • Donne makes death appear almost as a great achievement

Tone

Argument's Structure

A shift in tone occurs approximately halfway between the poem, from mocking to accusatory.

Throughout the first half of the poem before the shift occurs, Donne's tone is mocking, as he destroys death's typical image of power and authority. He says that although "some have called thee mighty and dreadful," that is not the truth. He does not give many examples or explanations quite yet at this point, but he is successful by using words with degrading connotations.

After the shift, the tone becomes accusatory when Donne accuses death of associating with "poison, war, and sickness" to put men to sleep. In addition, he compares it to a slave that relies on "fate, chance, kings, and desperate men." These allegations show that death relies on other, higher powers to achieve the same results as commonplace things like medicine.

Argument's structure

Establishes Argument’s Credibility Logically

Appeals to Value (a slave has an extremely low amount of worth)

Appeals to Logic ("poppy or charms" have the same effect as that of death)

_________________________________________

= Appeal to Character

(death cannot touch him, nor any good Christian, because it is powerless)

"One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die."

Theme

Donne's argument relies heavily on a series of many comparisons, all of which treat death as a person and degrade the power people tend to associate with it.

  • Comparison of death to a slave
  • "Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men..." This analogy takes away the majesty of death by associating it with a person who has no power or control over the orders they are given. Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men are personified as death's master.
  • Death’s connection to "poison, war, and sickness"
  • Donne almost makes these things seem like separate people, with which death "hangs out" with. It is almost reminiscent of the classic crowd of rebellious kids everyone avoids during their years in school.

Death has no majesty, only powerlessness. It is merely a pathway that leads to eternal life, a "slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men," and as such is not something "mighty and dreadful" as many people have been lead to believe. Death's own perception of itself as a forbidding entity powerful enough to destroy and "overthrow," is not a reality; it brings the greatest of men to a sense of peace when their souls are delivered. It is because of this that death has no basis for bragging and being proud; it is not the ominous, frightening force it would make itself out to be. Even its capability to bring rest it is not the best, due to the fact that "poppy or charms can make us sleep as well." Death's influence is not final, and certainly not long-lasting; once we wake eternally, death has served its purpose and becomes no more.

Synopsis

Donne treats Death as a person, and tells him not to be proud, because he is not as terrifying and powerful as most people would expect. To deliver this message, he uses a series of comparisons such as "rest and sleep," things that are often comforting or relaxing. Next, Donne equates Death with a slave and accuses him of relating with "poison, war, and sickness." Death, according to him, is unnecessary as long as we can take drugs for the same effect. If death is just a "short sleep," a good person will soon wake up and find that they have made their way into the afterlife. Once this happens, it will appear as though Death has died.

Background

It is unclear exactly when John Donne composed his holy sonnets, but many people speculate that they were written after the death of his wife in 1617. However, they were not published until two years after Donne’s death in 1633. These sonnets revolve around topics such as religion, sex, violence, and, in the case of this particular one, mortality. As a preacher, Donne wrote numerous powerful sermons in his lifetime, but the Holy Sonnets stand out due to their deep, intense, personal, complicated, and playful nature. When the poem concludes, he makes his audience realize that death is not something that should be feared, but embraced.

Speaker's Claim

Subject - Mortality

Speaker's Claim - Death should be embraced, not feared.

Major Metaphysical Conceit -

  • The speaker compares death to a slave
  • Connotations: inferiority, controllable, lowliness, not respectable
  • "Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, and dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, and poppy or charms can make us sleep as well..."

Although a large majority of people depict death as "mighty and dreadful," it is in actuality a slave, which depends on luck, accidents, murder, disease, and war to put men to sleep. Upon the moment one wakes from "one short sleep," they will find that they have made it into the afterlife, as shown by this:

"And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die."

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