In John Donne’s poem, “The Flea,” the speaker, a male, discusses how a flea represents their connection with his love, a female. Symbolizing the biting as the union of both, the male wants to “exchange fluids” with the flea and the love agrees to do so. Donne’s use of structure and his symbolism help the reader visualize the man’s innuendo and to understand how he deeply loves the woman.
Donne’s structure and use of figurative language in the poem allows for multiple ideas to develop and for the culmination of all those ideas into one main message. Each stanza in the poem has a different idea and has a logical flow. He begins with the idea that when the flea bites both him and his woman and goes forward to say that, “And in this flea our bloods mingled be;...and pampered swells with one blood made of two, and this, alas, is more than we do.” (Lines 4-9) This is his segway into the idea that the flea…show more content… The flea’s biting of both the man and woman give the man an opportunity to give respect for the flea. Although not explicitly stating that flea is valuable, when the woman attempts to kill the flea, he tries to stop her, in effort to value the flea for the opportunity it gave for the man to develop a connection with the woman.
The structure of the poem also allows for one other development, the woman’s voice. Although not explicitly expressed in the last part of the poem, Donne brings out the women’s voice through her acknowledgement and agreeing to the “exchange of fluids.” This development wraps the poem together and allows for a concise and clear understanding of the poem.
The flea is a valuable symbol in the context of this poem. The symbolism of the flea gives the speaker a chance to express his love to a woman in a creative manner. By acknowledging both the man and the woman, the author describes a successful attempt to woo a woman and shows how much the man longs to “love” the
