Essay on "The Broken Heart" - The imagery in John Donne's poetry is not just a vital part in his works,

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Essay on “The Broken Heart”

Mrs. Jauregui

09-22-02

Essay on “The Broken Heart”

        The imagery in John Donne´s poetry is not just a vital part in his works, it’s essential in combining his feelings and emotions so that he is able to write them down and create poems like this one. ´The Broken Heart´ is an example of how John Donne uses wordplay to construct images in the reader’s mind, enveloping them in every word which was meticulously put to make his poem perfect. The tone he uses also gives the impression he was almost desperate to be understood. He makes the poem personal to him by asking rhetorical questions like “Who will believe me, if I swear, That I have had the plague a year?” and “Who would not laugh at me, if I should say, I saw a flask of powder burn a day?” When revised carefully, these questions have a feeling of extreme anxiety and grief. The images and the tone of all of Donne´s poetry is what gives him his own classic, artistic approach.  

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        When Donne wrote this poem, evidently he was heartbroken. Otherwise, he would have never had such antagonistic feelings towards love and never would have described it as being something like a monster. He writes “but us Love draws, He swallows us, and never chaws.” This makes one imagine a viscous beast enticing you to come forth, but then when his grasp is fixed, he swallows you whole, with no mercy, and ´takes no prisoners,´ as the old saying goes. So in short, Donne considers love to be cruel, sneaky, and brutal, so if you fall under its spell, you will ...

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