Poetry: Death Be Not Proud

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Death Be Not Proud
Death Be Not Proud by John Donne is a poem that talks about the power of death. John addresses death as a “person” and warns it about its pride. He argues that such power is an illusion of power that death think it has over humans because in reality, it is a rest from the weariness of the world that it brings to its victims. The poet depicts death as a slave to other natural forces such as fate, kings and men who are desperate. Unlike other powers, death cannot control what happens to the live of its victims which in their own volition take lives. The speaker predicts that death itself will end, stating “Death, thou shalt die”.
This poem is closely related to the things that happened in his life. John lost his father when he was only four years old. His younger brother Henry was jailed for being a catholic sympathizer and soon after, he died after an epidemic hit the prison. He later came to lose his wife after giving birth to their 12th child. He wrote this poem at a time when he had suffered a serious illness during the eighth year when he had served the Anglican minister.
Cleary, we can see that the relationship John had with death from taking his dad to his wife. He addressed death in terms of how it had taken the very people who were very close to him. To him death might have succeeded in taking them but it did not know how much it had hurt him in the process. He was also at the verge of ding and could feel the pain of losing his self. This made him feel that death was actually enjoying watching him suffer. So the poem was largely based on the things he had experienced with death.
Donne’s poem follows the Shakespearean sonnet forms because it is made up of three quatrains – consisting of four lines each, concluded by a couplet. He has however used the Italian sonnet rhyme scheme for the first two groups of four lines ABBA; he then switches the rhyme scheme for the next quatrains to CDDC then back to EE in the last couplet rhyme.
In the first lines, he focuses on the subject and audience of this poem – death. Through personification, he creates a character from death itself. He cautions it against pride (line 1) and to rethink its position as “mighty and dreadful” force (line 2). He concludes by declaring to death that those it claims to kill do not die (line 4) and the poet cannot also suffer from death.
The second quatrain does no criticize death heavily and instead praises it by giving good qualities to it. He says that from it, comes much “Much pleasure” (line 5) because those good souls confined in the bodies are freed from the sufferings in the world. John then continues the flaks towards death claiming it is a slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate men. (line 9). Again we come to see that there is nowhere death is at the top of the hierarchy of power. Even a desperate man can choose death as an escape to earthly suffering but which ag...