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Recommended: The poems of john donne

Death is a very fascinating topic in literature. Many pieces of literature have been written about death or the afterlife. However, not many people take the same approach on death as John Donne. John Donne in his poem “Death, be not proud” takes a very unique stance on the topic of death. Donne does not speak of death as being either frightful or dreadful. Donne does not fear death but rather thinks of it as being powerless over humans. In each quatrain of this poem, Donne gives another example of how death is not as almighty as we may have come to believe.
In “Death, be not proud” Donne personifies the idea of death and speaks to death like he’s talking to a person. Throughout the poem, Donne attempts to belittle death to make him seem as small and powerless as possible. Donne’s obsession with death accumulated throughout the years following his wife’s death. John Donne try’s to mask the sorrow of his wife’s death by making death seem almost pleasurable. At one point in “Death, be not proud” Donne goes as far as to compare death to a pleasurable sleep.
Donne starts off in the f...

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