Literary Analysis Of John Donne's The Broken Heart

Love. It is the cure to pain. A remedy to sadness. The ideal happy ending to all fairy tales. Love is the cause to the butterflies and jittery feeling inside when that special someone is near. In numerous scenarios, love is portrayed as a positive asset to life. However, in John Donne’s poem“The Broken Heart,” love destructs and shatters a heart to an extent where restoration is incompetent. Throughout this doleful poem, Donne’s speaker uses an abundance of literary devices such as metaphors, personification, and imagery to convey his pessimistic and hopeless attitude towards the destructive nature of love. Metaphors help to illustrate more vividly the speaker’s negative outlook or attitude on love. From the opening to the progression of the poem, Donne’s poem is written from the opposite view of love’s joyous stereotype: “Ah what a trifle is a heart,/ If once into love’s hands it come”(11-12)! In the speaker’s opinion love did not value their heart. Metaphorically, love is displayed as a trifle, an item of little importance. A heart becomes a small, unvaluable object as soon as it is in the hands of love. Not only did the anguished speaker’s heart become meaningless and in shattered pieces when love was painted in the picture but love also exposed …show more content…
Donne writes his poem to warn those stuck under the spell of love. The spell that love will come to aid in times of need. The brainwashing that love is all one needs in life to live happily. Donne’s speaker steps away from the typical spotlight shined on love, accomplishing a controversial yet relatable poem. Donne’s lost soul of a speaker pours his hopelessly, pessimistic attitude on paper through the usage of metaphors, personification, and