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Essay / Dynamics and Movement: Importance of Poem Structure in the Sacred Sonnet I
In his nineteen sacred sonnets, John Donne contemplates his mortality and explores themes of divine love and judgment as well as his deep issues personal. In the vaguely Petrarchan first sacred sonnet "Thou hast made me", Donne presents a desperate situation in which death and hell loom before the speaker because of his sins, and God's grace is the only way through which he can be saved. The poem focuses on the speaker's inescapable connection with death, his growing despair in fear of his fall to hell, and his appeal to God for help. Movement is used extensively, both in the physical situation of the speaker and in the technical aspects of the poem, which reflects the situation and creates tension in the poem. In Holy Sonnet I, Donne uses movement in the structure of the poem and in subject matter to describe the speaker's trap and God's role in the outcome of his predicament. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Donne's Holy Sonnet 1 is frightening in the closeness the reader feels to the speaker's situation. The sonnet is written in the first person, which, in addition to the vivid imagery and dramatic speeds at which the poem moves, creates for the reader a more intimate experience of such impending death. The poem is composed of an octave and a seset. In the octave, Donne describes the speaker's situation: his imprisonment in a labyrinth of despair from which only Death from hell awaits him at the exit. In the following seset, Donne explores the speaker's hope as he turns to God for help. In the poem, the large amount of movement described in the speaker's situation creates increased tension and describes how he is trapped in his anxiety and doomed to fall into hell unless he finds a source of salvation. The speaker “[runs] toward death, and death meets [him] just as quickly” (3). Caught in the anguish of this inevitable collision, the speaker has lost all sense of pleasure like yesterday. The words “run,” “meet,” and “quick” are then immediately followed by silence, as the speaker “[dares] not move [his] dark eyes” (5), for he is trapped despair behind him. and “death before [which casts] / such terror” (6). The syntax of these lines changes depending on the physical situation of the speaker. The separation in line 3 between the speaker running toward death and then death meeting him also reflects the image of death enclosing on all sides. Such use of line order is repeated in line 6, in which despair is behind and death in front. The active position that death and despair take, for example "death meets me" (3) instead of "I meet death", contributes to the disturbing image of death which "casts / such terror" ( 6) as if she were also alive. as the speaker is, and serves to increase the tension in the poem. Donne continues to describe the “weak flesh [wasting away] / Through sin…and [it weighs toward hell]” (7). The action of the flesh, highlighted as “weak” through the use of alliteration, weighing the speaker towards hell, contributes to the inevitability of the situation. The parallel structure of lines six, seven and eight, in which with "death before throws / Such terror, and [his] weak flesh is wasted / ...in it, what it weighs towards hell" uses the repetition of the word “done”. Such repeated use of the same word, and thus the emphasis on rejecting the terror and waste of flesh that hangs over hell, intensifies the terror felt by the speaker and the maze-like situation. At the end of the ninth.