Rhetorical Devices In Death Be Not Proud

Death, the Step to Life There are three main events in a person's life: birth, the process of living, and death. To most, the worst of these is the last, but in the Holy Sonnet, “Death Be Not Proud” by John Donne, death is seen in a far less horrid way. The thematic purpose, created through language, is to desensitize death and present it in a new light that makes it seem like one of the better parts of a humanly existent. In these first sentences of the poem, the speaker challenges Death and discredits its reputation as an all-powerful phase of life by using rhetoric. Death is personified so that the speaker can talk to it, and not about it, causing a direct connection between Death and the speaker. The speaker calls out and commands, “Death be not proud” (1). He uses imperative sentence class to tell Death that he should not be proud for who he is and what he does. The speaker then goes into, “though some have called thee/Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so” …show more content…
He tells, “From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be/Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow...” (5-6), which is a metaphor explaining that “rest and sleep”, activities that almost everyone loves, are just one small part of the “picture” that makes up Death, and since Death is just a more intense and long version of “rest and sleep”, then man should not fear Death, but rather imbrase it as a huge nap. The speaker adds, “And soonest our best men with thee do go/Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery” (7-8), which alludes to the young men who go off to fight as soldiers and die in battle. The speaker is saying that these “best men” go with Death and die, but get rewarded with a time of peaceful rest and a deiverence of their souls, which is what everyone wants when they are to die. The young soldiers who have died are just getting their reward earlier than those of a normal