Interpretive Use Of Metaphors In Poetry

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John Donne and Robert Frost are two poets that clearly use metaphors, conceits, and imagery to represent the main point in their works, both using them to represent love. Using metaphors, poets can state that love is “gold” without using the word like or as. Conceits, on the other hand, are extended metaphors. Imagery is visually descriptive or figurative language. Metaphors can be stated only once in the poem and hold the same meaning, conceits are metaphors that are used throughout the poem, and imagery can be used only once or throughout the poem. Poets often use all three to represent different things, but Donne and Frost use these to represent love, although Donne and Frost both are representing love in their work, they are representing …show more content…

The poem states, “It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,/ And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.” The flea is used throughout the poem to show that when in love, there is a connection between the two, making two become one. The poem also states, “This flea is you and I” supporting the claim that love makes two become one. Laurence Perrine explained that he interpreted the metaphor of “the flea” as a man trying to seduce a woman. Perrine states, “A flea has bitten a young man and then has jumped to the young woman and begun to bite her . . . He points to the flea and remarks that it has innocently mingled their bloods within itself, which is no more than sexual intercourse does.” Both Donne and Perrine state that the flea does “more than we would do.” The flea represents the love Donne wants the two to have, but the young woman is not willing to do what the young man is wanting. The flea undoubtedly represents the love between the young man and young …show more content…

Frost states in the very beginning of the poem, “He saw her from the bottom of the stairs,” clearly showing the separation with the wife standing at the top and the husband at the bottom. Frost then goes on to explain, “He spoke/ Advancing towards her,” showing the husband’s effort to void the gap in between he and his wife. Robert Swennes interpreted the poem to show the conversations and actions between the couple also showed overtones of withdrawal. Swennes also stated that the wife felt hostility towards her husband, “He regrets, “A man must partly give up being a man/ With women-folk.” Swennes then explains to us that he understood this to be the reason his wife felt hostility, and he explains that the wife interpreted his regret as a regret of their courtship and

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