Post 2

Reaction to Donne's "The Flea"

Part I-

I really enjoyed reading this poem. The flea metaphor was unexpected but kept me interested throughout the poem because it was so peculiar. I also like how sex is inferred to in this poem but never explicitly stated because the reader can come to their own conclusion of what this poem is about, like poetry.



Part II

Choosing one of Yeats's, Donne's, or Frost's works, focus on a particular image or metaphor from the poem and discuss how that one moment relates or is critical to the meaning of the entire poem.

The obvious metaphor in this poem is the flea. This flea, having bitten both the speaker and his lady friend, has joined them together in a way "more than we would do" (9). Throughout the poem, the speaker is trying to convince his lady friend to sleep with him. The flea image is so important because it is the flea that has united the two lovers like they never have before. The flea is an important image because it's such a trivial, everyday object and, in using it to convince his lady lover to engage in sexual intercourse, he hopes it will make her more accepting of such an intense act. Containing the blood from both lovers, the speaker feels that they are intimately connected and wants to consummate this intimacy by doing the ultimate act, intercourse.

The reader is lead to believe that the reason that the lady lover is not engaging in sexual intercourse is due to the dishonor that it would bring to herself and her family. Knowing that honor is an important virtue to his lady friend, the speaker beseeches the young lady not to kill the flea, telling her that she would be ending three lives with the killing of the flea. Because the flea contains the blood and livelihood of the lovers, killing it would cost just as much dishonor as sleeping with him would.