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John Donne's Holy Sonnet 14

Decent Essays

In “Holy Sonnet 14” by John Donne, dramatizes the conflict between contradictions and a relationship with God.

In the first two lines, “Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;” (lines 1-2) the speaker begins to ask God to “batter” into to his hear, so he can be forgiven from sin. He uses the word batter because he wants something more intense, because he doesn’t feel anything from just Gods, “knock, breath, or shine”. Having these three verbs in the poem, can correlate to two things throughout this poem. It can correlate to the Holy Trinity, Father, son , and holy spirit or it can foreshadow for later in the poem towards line 4, when it describes God as a craftsman, a glass blower. …show more content…

This comparison plays a huge part of symbolism for poem as a whole. The symbol of the town is dominant throughout the poem and can be seen throughout other parts of the poem. The whole theme of the poem is used in the image of a town and even actions are used through the imagery of the town. This then correlates, to why he wants God to “batter” his heart. Batters were used back in the past to take down doors or walls, so this explains why he wants to “batter” because he considers himself a town. Having this comparison to the town, is basically saying that he wants God to come in but he is being unsuccessful. This is where it becomes interesting, because this is when Donne uses a simile instead of a metaphor when saying “I, like an usurp’d town”. This is important because this is where is becomes to the fact of realization and how is requests are unrealistic.

Then in lines 7-8, “Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.” This is where the speaker of the poem is having trouble showing his faith in God and incapable of warding off evil. The speaker starts to blame God for not helping him ward off evil, and is being very self-centered. Having the repetition of “me” shows that this is self-centered and the speaker overall is self-centered. Also contradiction is seen here, because reason did the opposite

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