The Flea By John Donne Analysis

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In this close reading, I will be analyzing “The Flea” by John Donne. “The Flea” is a love sonnet that uses a flea as a reason for the writer and the woman to get together. The poem interchanges rhythmically between iambic tetrameter and iambic pentameter, ending with two pentameter lines at the close of each stanza. Each stanza consists of nine lines. The rhyme scheme is in couplets rhyming, AABBCCDDD.
In the first stanza, Donne uses extended metaphors to get his point across about the flea. The first stanza speaks of how the writer and the woman become one after being bitten by the flea. This stanza begins with “Mark but this flea, and mark in this,” punish the flea, and punish only the flea. “How little that which thou deniest me is,” she denies his sexual advances which means little to her. “It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea, our two bloods mingled be,” the flea bites them both causing their blood to mix together inside the flea. The mixing of the blood cannot be a sin, or shame, or lose of virginity therefore; neither should it be for their other bodily to mix together, “A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead.”
“Yet this enjoys before it woo,” the flea enjoys life before it cries or grieves on an exclamation of grief or a distressful incident of affliction. “Woo” is a condition of misery and misfortune, the “woo” of the flea may reference the pains of getting bit by the flea. “And pampered swells with one blood made of two,” the flea is lucky to be filled with their blood. This flea becomes larger in size with blood from both subjects. The flea has joined them together already by mixing their blood together which is more than he is asking of the woman, “And this, alas, is more than we would...

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...f sex.
The writer speaks to the woman through rhetorical questions, “Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence,” has she sinned by spilling the blood of the innocent? Has she damned herself to hell by persecuting the flea? “Wherein could this flea guilty be, except in that drop which it sucked from thee?” What could the flea have done so badly, except sucking a little drop of blood from them?
“Yet thou triumph’st and say'st that thou/ Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now." The woman retaliates, celebrating her success in killing the flea, makes neither him, nor her any less noble. The writer responds, “Tis true, then learn how false, fears be;” it is true, and learn how false your fears are. The writer closes with, “Just so much honor, when you yield’st to me. Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.” When she surrenders to him, she will lose no

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The Flea By John Donne Analysis

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