Thursday, January 29, 2009

The Bait

In The Bait, by John Donne, Donne uses visual imagery throughout this poem to help characterize the mood and tone of the narrator. Donne also uses a number of metaphors in this poem to help represent people, but more specifically men and a woman. Without these metaphors the poem would be stark and would lose a lot of its mystery of interpretation.
In The Bait by John Donne, Donne uses simple but appealing imagery to help characterize the elements of his metaphors. In this poem, Donne uses fish and fishing bait to characterize men and woman, men as the fish and women as the bait. In the first half of the poem, especially the first two stanzas, Donne establishes a tone of beauty and comfort between himself and an unknown lover. This makes the reader let his/her guard down and start thinking that the poem is going to be about how beautiful love is. However, Donne has a different take on how love is and changes the tone and mood completely in the second half of the poem. This is seen in the way that the visual imagery is completely changed from holding positive connotations to negative ones. At this point in the poem the reader starts to realize that because of the imagery shift and the mood along with it, The Bait is more of a warning about women and love that how beautiful love is.
Throughout The Bait, Donne also exercises the use of metaphors to establish a mystery about what the “bait” actually is. When you first start reading the poem you don’t really have a handle on what the fish are and what the bait is, you in a way simply just view them as aspects of fishing. However, they aren’t just components of fishing, Donne uses them as metaphors to represent men and women and how the initial seduction begins and what happens after the man/fish is “hooked” on the woman/bait… agony
In The Bait by John Donne, Donne uses both visual imagery and metaphors to help set the tone and mood of the poem as well as amplify the message behind it. With out the subtle but powerful imagery, the poem would lose almost all of its indication of tone and mood, as well as the shifts that they make throughout the poem. Besides the imagery, the metaphors that take place in The Bait are equally important in the way that it helps add to the mystery about the fish and bait as well as what love is and has to offer.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Commentary, The Good Morrow

In The Good-Morrow, by John Donne, Donne uses both diction and imagery to help establish the overall loving tone in his writing. This is seen in the way that Donne uses many words through out this poem that carry loving connotations. We see this in the first, second, and third paragraphs, which only reinforces this notion, giving the reader no choice but to recognize the tone of this poem.
In the first paragraph of The Good-Morrow, Donne establishes the bond between him and his “love,” by using very strong diction such as desire. This paints the picture of his ultimate want, which lets us know that he needs her. He also uses words such as wonder to help us see how life was before he and his “love” were together.
In the second paragraph, Donne shows no signs of slowing down the intense diction and imagery. He uses fear to depict how fiercely and carefully they watch each other, even though it is out of love. He also uses visual imagery in his comparison to sea-discoveries, maps, and worlds. He does this to show how epic their love for each other is. He encapsulates their love into a reference to their love, as two individual worlds coming together, which helps us understand just how big and important their love for each other is.
In the third paragraph, Donne also continues his visual imagery in the words eye, face, heart, and die. All of these seem to apply to a human being, and what is more human than to love? I believe he does this to draw parallels to human beings, in which a large portion of human life is love. He also continues to compare his love to planets when he references hemispheres. I once again think he does this to emphasize how important his love is.
As you can see, in The Good-Morrow, by John Donne, Donne uses both strong diction and striking visual imagery to establish the loving tone that is present in this poem. He does this simply to help the cause of his poem and seeing as it is a love poem it helps to use strong language about love.