Essay on John Donne's The Flea
Uploaded by morocha on Nov 18, 2012
John Donne's The Flea
John Donne an English poet and clergyman was one of the greatest metaphysical poets. His poetry was marked by conceits and lush imagery. The Flea is an excellent example of how he was able to establish a parallel between two very different things. In this poem, the speaker tries to seduce a young woman by comparing the consequences of their lovemaking with those of an insignificant fleabite. He uses the flea as an argument to illustrate that the physical relationship he desires is not in itself a significant event, because a similar union has already taken place within the flea. However, if we look beneath the surface level of the poem, Donne uses the presence of the flea as a comparison to the presence of a baby, thus making the sub textual plot about aborting the baby.
In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker develops similarities between the fleabite and lovemaking. The first two lines of the poem, “Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that, which thou deny’st me, is;” I interpreted to mean that the woman doesn’t deny the flea access to her body, yet she denies the advancements of the speaker. Next the speaker uses conceit to illustrate the similarities between their lovemaking and the mingling of their blood within the flea. “Me is sucked first, and now sucks the, An in this flea our two bloods mingled be.” The speaker uses this argument to show the woman that the same physical exchange, which takes place between her and a flea, is the same type of union that he is proposing. The speaker uses the following lines of the stanza to reassure the woman that their act could not be considered a sin because a fleabite isn’t considered as such. Such a common event cannot be a loss of innocence because if that were true nearly everyone would have lost his or her innocence. Therefore this lady should not worry about giving herself to him before they marry, because their only act is the mixing pf their blood. The final lines of the first stanza are the point in which the poet introduces the sub textual idea of the baby. “And pampered swells with one blood made of two.” On the surface this line describes the physical changes that happen to a flea’s body after it fills with...