Violent Action in John Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV

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In "Holy Sonnet XIV" By John Donne, Donne asks God to help him. The way Donne believes God can help him is by Donne being beaten down by God only to rise up. Because Donne asks God to heat him down, he is asking God to do a violent action. The first quatrain shows Donne asking God to be violent in the intensification of verbs. The second quatrain shows Donne asking God to be violent when Donne uses the imagery of a city taken over and how he longs for God to come into the city. The third quatrain shows Donne asking God to be violent when Donne says, "break that knot again."(Donne, line 11) Donne wants God to break his union with sin. The couplet shows Donne asking God to be violent when Donne asks God to take him and imprison him because he wants to be consumed by God's presence. Concerning the issue of the violent actions asked to God by Donne, Craig Payne of Indian Hills Community College says: "The strategy of the poem appears to be that of approaching a dangerous, blasphemous anthropomorphism in the heat of devotion, but deflecting the danger, just in time, by the equation of sensual passion to spiritual virtue; for the concluding couplet declares that true freedom comes when one is imprisoned by God, and that purity of heart comes with God's ravishment (sexual assault, with the double meaning of "ravish" as "to win the heart of" someone). By the poem's conclusion, the conceit of the rape, which ensures chastity no longer, skirts blasphemy. In fact, in Donne's hands, it even becomes orthodox, an idol of devotion worthy of emulation." Below we see how Craig Payne supports his analysis of this poem. The first quatrain shows violent commands along with contradictions. In the first two lines, Donne says, "Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you/ As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend."(Donne, 1-2) These two lines show that Donne is asking for help. He points out what God has done versus what Donne wants God to do. Donne says that God is standing at the door to his heart knocking but Donne wants God to break down this door to his heart. This is evidence of a violent action. Donne says, "That I might rise and stand, o'erthrow me and bend/ Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new.

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