Donne proves this concept by having the flea suck the blood out of the two personas in the poem and then and having the speaker compare his intentions to the little flea’s actions. The man implies that the flea sucking the blood out of the woman is worse than him having sex with her, and that to all effects their blood has already been mingled in this flea. He then carries on to say that though blood has already mingled, and this flea has sucked it from both, it was not considered dishonourable:
“Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead”
(The Flea, 1, ln 5-6)
The flea has the power to mix two people’s blood, and the speaker finds that this is equally bad as having sex, so to all effects they have already done so. Since no sin or shame is derived from the flea’s actions, it means that sex is not bad then either.
The speaker wants the flea to remain on the woman’s arm, alive, because it is a representation of the man and the woman coming together, as mentioned by “this flea is you and I” (Line 12), and now the both he and the woman are living together within the flea. At the end of the second stanza the woman wants to kill the flea, kill the symbol of their relationship, and the man desperately tries to tell her otherwise with his arguments. He states that by killing the flea 3 sins would be committed in one, as she would be killing the flea and a part of them both. With this argument the speaker is trying to make her feel guilty for doing so, and that it would be much better if she would commit only one instead, which would be to have sex with him.
In the third stanza one sees clearly that the woman does eventually kill the flea, as the speaker is apparently shocked by her actions:
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
(“The Flea”, 3, ln 22-23)
Since the woman has broken the bond of the flea the speaker now finds himself trying to persuade her with a new tactic. He makes her feel guilty of what she has just done by stating that the flea was guilty of nothing but the “drop” of blood it sucked from her. Yet she feels that she has triumphed over the fear of killing this flea, and that she does not feel as though she has just killed a part of herself. At this point the poet uses this to strengthen his argument with a strong twist at the end of the poem:
'Tis true; then learn how false fears be;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee
(“The Flea”, 3, ln 28-30)
With this he states that if fears are false, then her fears of having sex with him are, too, false. As the flea’s death did not harm the woman’s honour, the man is saying that having sex with him will not harm her honour either.
This conceit is very complete and the speaker’s arguments are always one step ahead of the woman whom he wants to have sex with. His desperation to have sex with her forces him to change his argument as the poem progresses just to convince her that to lose her virginity is insignificant to her. The speaker hopes to convince the woman to sleep with him by trivializing sex and comparing it to something as small and insignificant as a flea.
