Analysis: Forbidding Mourning, Holy Sonnet 10, And Meditation 17

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John Donne's A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Holy Sonnet 10, and Meditation 17 all share a common topic: The human soul transcending. Through this shared thread, the three pieces manage to each convey a distinct message about the human condition that ultimately converges into a collectivist identity of humanity. Everyone is linked to everyone else not merely through this phyisical life's friendships, enmities, and love, but is also connected through his or her very soul. This emphasis on the collectivist nature of the soul itself is particularly important because it then allows these connections to persist through and eventually reunite following death itself. Only this time, they will have transcended into their spiritual world. The first …show more content…

While this may at first seem to counter the idea that death is an elevation, it is in fact complementary. For when Donne said that "any man's death diminishes me," the emphasis is not on death, but on man. Each person's death is the loss of a chapter from the book of life, and because each and every person shares that very volume, that loss affects everyone. Temporarily, their book is less magnificent; humanity as a whole has lost that person's contributions, thoughts, identity, and feelings. But the second implication rectifies this seemingly bleak answer to life's riddle: Everyone of the church will reunite in the end, and all of humanity's splendour shall come together again. Incidentally, this is also where Meditation 17 converges upon the first …show more content…

The first and perhaps most important characteristic of Death is that he is a "slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men" (line 9). Notice how "kings" are not the only slavers of Death, but also "desperate men," a characteristic applicable to almost anyone from any social stratum at some point in his or her life. That the slavers of Death may come from all walks of life is central; for by presenting Death as an imposition by any men on any others, the speaker effectively suggests a gruesome connection between everyone: Each and every person's life is in the hands of hundreds of thousands of

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