Situation
In Death, be not proud by John Donne the speaker is shaming and insulting death as if he were a man and showing how death will never win and at some point, will cease to exist.
Mood and Tone
The mood of the poem is dark, the speaker is on a tangent about death. However, the speaker is using condescension to belittle Death. At the end of the poem, the speaker says “we wake eternally/ and death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.” This thought is actually a quite uplifting idea- eternal waking. While the overall tone of the piece is very gloomy, the underlying message is one of hope and optimism.
Structure and Title
Death, Be Not Proud is a Petrarchan Sonnet written by John Donne. It follows Petrarchan rhyme scheme everywhere but in the…show more content… Line 7 > Apostrophe, Donne refers to the “best men” who are nameless and ultimately stand for those who are taken too soon.
Line 9 > Donne uses metaphor to say that death is a “slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men.” Which undermines deaths supposed authority over all things.
Line 11 > Metonymy, the speaker relates sleep and death to each other, which makes death seem weak and impermanent.
Line 13 > Allusion, the speaker alludes to eternal life which is a reference to God and Christianity.
Line 14 > Alliteration, Donne uses the idea is three distinct ways in the final line. He references death as the loss of life, the personification of Death, and the nonexistence of death (Death, thou shalt die.)
Lines 10, 11 and 12 feature anaphora which heightens the insult towards Death (addition of insults) and creates climax for the reader.
Message and Theme
The message of the poem is that death should not hold itself highly because life will win out in the end. Death is only sleep, and once we wake from it, we enter into eternal living.
