Death By John Donne Analysis

This poem demonstrates how death conflicts with its interpretation of being all powerful when Donne views death as a topic or event that should be mocked. In the first quatrain death is put down, to be viewed as lacking power in the grande scheme of life. “Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so”, this is Donne’s beginning of stop deaths pride. Death could possibly be seen at the end of the second line as it ends in a semicolon which symbols something stopped but then continues and goes on. This could be the pause between the physical death of a person and their soul moving on into the eternal afterlife as in the same quatrain says “ Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.” One cannot simply be killed after already moving on into …show more content…
Therefore if the cycle truly continues are the first quatrain suggests, death is truly not as powerful as we think. Death is only the death to life in the living world but not living as a whole as we move into the afterlife. Death however will never experience death itself as death cannot be killed and find eternal pleasures.

The second quatrain presents a new idea, death is not to be thought of as pleasurable, not painful. “rest and sleep, which they pictures be” suggests that death is not a bad process. Death however when being compared to ideas such as rest and sleep becomes to be see as a relaxing, recharging image, as if one is simply has not fallen into an eternal sleep but a temporary one. Death is to be as if a nap. Death is not to be considered to be harmful or agonizing as Donne calles death to be “ more pleasure , then from thee much more must flow.” Death to Donne is an end to the cruel life we all live in now and an entry into what would be considered a happy afterlife empty of the cruelty of the harsh …show more content…
The couplet is answering to death, and the answer is short and curt. This does not give much to death and shows yet again how Donne in this sonnet does not let death’s ego be inflated. Death is only given the short answer which is like the time it takes death to occur, a generally short time. Donne also clears the point that in fact the poem is religious as it has the “wake eternally” signaling the moving on to the afterlife. Death cannot exist once one is already dead, in the afterlife death no longer exists and in a sense dies as Donne says “ Death, thou shalt die.” Living things can only die once. Once Death has killed everything, it shall cease in necessity and cease to exist, ending up committing its own suicide, the death of Death itself. In this couplet death no longer has any power at all to Donne and is at its final resting place, its own death. Donne uses his words to kill