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  • Essay / An erotic metaphor implicit in The Flea by John Donne

    MARK but this bullet, and mark in this, Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay How little is what you deny me; He sucked me first, and now he sucks you, And in this flea our two bloods have mixed. be. You know that this cannot be said: a sin, nor a shame, nor a loss of virginity; Yet this one enjoys before seducing, and swells with a single blood made of two; And that, alas! This is more than we would do. O remains, three lives in a spare chip, where we are almost, yes, more than married. This flea is you and me, and this is our marriage bed and our marriage temple. Although the parents want it, and you, we are met, and cloistered in these living jet walls. Although custom makes you fit to kill me, let not this self-murder be added, and to this sacrilege, three sins in killing three. Cruel and sudden, have you since purpled your nail in the blood of innocence? How could this flea be guilty, except in this drop that he sucked from you? Yet you triumph, and you say that you find neither you nor I weaker now. then learn how false the fears are; so much honor, when you yield to me, will be wasted, because the death of this flea has taken your life. This poem shows John Donne's skill at transforming the least likely images into elaborate metaphysical symbols of love. , lust and romance. “The Flea” uses the image of a flea that has just bitten the speaker and his beloved to describe a conflict over whether the two will have sex. The speaker wants to but his beloved doesn't, and so he uses the flea as an argument and metaphor to show how harmless sex can be. He believes that if their blood mixed with the flea is harmless and innocent, the sexual mixture would be just as harmless. The speaker tells his beloved to look at the flea and notice “how small” this “thing” she refuses him is, thus trivializing sex. Their mixing of blood cannot be called “sin, or shame, or loss of virginity”; rather, the chip united them in a way that, “alas, is more than we would do.” His arguments go far beyond this preliminary idea and are even overturned when his beloved kills the flea. This article examines the central idea that the flea is a metaphor used to trivialize sex and, ultimately, to convey the unimportance of virginity. The opening line "mark this flea, and mark in it how little that denies me is" shows that the flea is small and inconsequential, and reveals that the speaker's lady is denying him sex. The flea metaphor develops as it relates. to other symbols. For example, blood is used more than once as a symbol in the poem. The speaker speaks of blood with reverence and equates it with honor: blood symbolizes life and soul. The speaker notices that in the flea, his blood and that of his wife are mixed. Likewise, during sex, their souls “mix” and become one. The speaker initially appears to have a respectful attitude toward sex, believing that it can be spiritual and important. But this ultimately turns out to be just a ploy to prove that sex shouldn't be taken so seriously. As his beloved prepares to kill the flea, the speaker "holds" her hand, asking her to spare the trinity of three lives in the flea. : his life, his life and the life of the flea. In the flea where their blood is mixed, they are almost “married”, even more than married, and the flea is their “marital bed” and their “temple of marriage”. Although their parents “want it” and. 1-2.