“It will blind you with tears
like a lover.”
When you cut an onion it makes you cry, and usually love makes you cry a lot because you are so happy. These are both times where crying isn’t for the usual reason, sadness. This could be the link between the onion and love that is being developed in the poem. This is also one of only four cases of enjambment in this poem. The writer obviously wants the lines to flow into each other here maybe so it is like when tears are flowing down your face.
Duffy then explores the idea of truth behind the relationship, quite the opposite of what John Donne believes of in his relationship.
“ I am trying to be truthful.”
The writer obviously wants her lover to know the real meaning of love, not his stereotypical view. Duffy also wants to emphasise the fact of how irregular her present is and it should be thought of.
“Not a cute card or kissogram.”
She doesn’t want him to receive the normal presents off her; she knows that he would just be expecting that and he wouldn’t even think about the meaning of the normal presents. She wants to shock her lover with her present to make sure that the he understands the meaning of why she is giving him a present for Valentine’s Day – to offer a gift to your true love and emphasise how much you care about them.
Duffy then repeats the first line of her poem again in the middle of the poem. “I give you an onion.”
She is repeating the line to emphasise the meaning of the present, or it could be to start a different part of the poem, a different attitude towards love. Then there is a contrast with a line in the first stanza.
“Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
like the careful undressing of love.”
The contrast is highlighting how many different meanings an onion because at first you think an onion couldn’t possibly be related to love but then the contrast used by Duffy shows you that it can even be linked with love in two totally different ways. After the repetition of ‘I give you an Onion’ the poet seams to have changed her attitude towards love and taken a rather ambiguous attitude towards it. Some more dubious lexis appears in the last stanza, “lethal,” “knife.” This suggestion is explaining that there is something dangerous or threatening about love once it leads to marriage, as it is more serious than just a normal relationship.
Throughout the poem a conceit or extended metaphor is another one of the techniques that is used by Duffy. She keeps on linking back to the onion with whatever she says. It is a very unusual item to be linked with love, the same as the item that Donne uses to link with love and also use as a conceit: A flea.
Donne was a member of a group called the metaphysical poets. They all wrote poems for each other. This could be a reason why you don’t know who Donne is writing his poem to, as only the group would have known whom this poem was written to and that could have been how Donne wanted to keep it.
Donne’s poem is different to Duffy’s poem as it is about a man just wanting to get his girlfriend into bed whereas Duffy’s is about the true meanings of love and Valentine’s Day. It is also written in a very regular pattern (unlike Duffy’s) with nine lines in each stanza. The rhyming also has a very regular pattern. He could be saying that it is normal or regular for a man and woman to sleep with each other.
“Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead.”
This evokes the idea that it isn’t a shame or a sin for a woman to sleep with a man and lose her virginity, it is normal. He is convinced that he will be able to get his lover into bed, he thinks that the two of them are joined together uniquely in the flea.
“It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee.”
The flea sucked the poet’s blood, then sucked the unknown lover’s blood and the blood was mixed together and united them as one. He is trying to make the girl go to bed with him but he is persuading her by convincing her that they were meant to be together because the flea mixed their blood. He is also implying that it is just normal for a man and a woman to sleep together.
Donne also links an idea towards pregnancy when he is trying to persuade the unknown lover to sleep with him.
“And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two.”
This is linked towards pregnancy because when a baby is just born, it is pampered, the stomach of a woman swells when she is pregnant with the baby and a baby is one blood made of two, the mother and the father. This could also be linking to before sex when the penis ‘swells’ with blood.
In the second stanza the poet is asking the lover not to kill the flea.
“O stay, three lives in one flea spare.”
Here he is saying that she doesn’t need to kill the flea. It has three lives inside it, the poets, the lovers and the fleas, so she wouldn’t just be killing the flea, she would be killing Donne and herself as well. A lot of religious words are used in this stanza. This is because at the time that the poem was written, religion was very important.
“Our marriage bed and marriage temple is.”
“And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.”
Donne is using these religious words because he knows that if his lover thinks that it is a sin against God to kill the flea then she will never do it. Donne then links back to the fact that his lover would also be killing herself if she killed the flea.
“Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder be.”
This is telling us that his lover is apt to kill him - by killing the relationship - but she is not apt to self-murder.
The third stanza is where the lover kills the flea. John Donne is extremely angry with his lover as he thinks that there was no reason for her to kill the flea she was just being cruel. Donne may be trying to make the woman feel guilty, forcefully questioning whether she has,
“Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?”.
This outburst is aimed directly at the woman who may well be made to feel that her act is unreasonably and unnecessarily brutal. Donne then goes on to question his lover about how the flea could possibly be guilty enough to deserve such a punishment.
“Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck’d from thee?”
This is implying that the flea can’t possibly be guilty because all it has done is suck a drop of blood from his lover and that is what all fleas do. Donne then again emphasises the idea that now because of the flea’s death some life has been taken from his lover.
“Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.”
This puts forward the idea of some life being taken from his lover because part of her was contained inside the flea.
At first the two poems appear very different but after close inspection links can be established between the two poems. I think Carol Ann Duffy’s poem is the more serious of the two as she is using an unusual item to portray her feelings for her lover. John Donne is just worried about getting his lover into to bed using the idea of the flea instead of wanting to portray his feelings towards his lover. He is too overconfident with himself that he will get the girl into bed with him when in the end he doesn’t succeed.
