Literary Analysis Of Since She Whom I Loved By John Donne

The holy sonnet ‘Since she whom I loved’ by John Donne paints God as a domineering and punitive lord who manipulates human life for self-satisfaction. The poem’s rhetorician is conflicted between his physical and spiritual love. Such a struggle creates tension between his sense of loss and hope that the decease of his lover was requisite for God’s plan. Nonetheless, an ambiguity penetrates the poem, suggestive of a subtle yearning. A tension infiltrates the poem whereby the speaker expresses optimism, whilst acknowledging his emotional wounds. The poem is not a violent outpouring of frenzied emotion, which one would expect from a mourner. The tone of the poem is calm and resigned. The speaker is accepting of God’s decision to reclaim his lover. He refers to “her last debt to nature” which insinuates that all human life is merely a loan, of which death is the final payment. Thus now the debt is ‘paid’, he should not despise God, who obtains the right to recover what he brought into being. The poem is an attempt by the speaker to reassure himself that her death was heaven-sent, as when he claims that his “good is dead”, implying both that all the ‘good’ in his …show more content…
Though ambivalent in his suffering, the speaker believes that his perception of divine interrelation is one of accuracy. He is certain that he seeks the love of his creator and life in heaven, though his condemnation of God for denying him temptation is denoted. The tension at the core of the poem resides in the notion that it is the pleasures and indulgences of the world and human flesh that make his life worthwhile. God is merely the tyrant whom revokes all life’s bliss and gratification, leaving his subjects both thirsty and exanimate. Word count: 1,076