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Essay on the theme of Death in John Donne's 'Death Be Not Proud' £8.49
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  3. PEARSON (PEARSON)
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  5. English Literature 2015
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  7. Unit 3 - Poetry

Essay

Essay on the theme of Death in John Donne's 'Death Be Not Proud'
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An essay exploring the theme of death in John Donne's poem 'Death Be Not Proud'. This poem features in the John Donne anthology or may be useful to study for unseen poetry. Written by a current university student that achieved an A* in English Literature A level by memorising these essays which are...

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  • March 24, 2022
  • 3
  • 2020/2021
  • Essay
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Leena Ramlakhan 13RL Sunday 22 nd September 2019



Explore the way that Donne presents the concept of Death in ‘Death, be not proud’ and
one other poem.


An immediate point of comparison between John Donne’s ‘Death, be not proud’ and ‘Good
Friday 1613 Riding Westward’ is that the overarching theme of both poems is the concept of
death which is portrayed in two rather contrasting ways. In ‘Death, be not proud,’ Donne
directly addresses Death in a belittling manner to emphasise its misled sense of superiority
over living beings. Meanwhile, in ‘Good Friday 1613 Riding Westward,’ Donne portrays a
more optimistic outlook of what death symbolises in a religious context, specifically the
death of Christ which redeemed all of humankind of Original Sin and consequently reduced
the gap between us and the Divine.


Both poems invoke the temptation of sin according to Christian theology. From the outset of
‘Death, be not proud,’ Donne ironically personifies Death as a living entity and rejects the
idea that death is an omnipotent and almost divine force that people have historically
respected and feared, especially in religious terms. The sonnet dramatically opens with a
conversational quality: “Death, be not proud.” Although Donne acknowledges that some
people fear Death and call him “mighty and dreadful,” he still confidently asserts, “thou art
not so,” before beginning to develop his conceit that Death is not strong at all. Donne
directly exhorts death to eschew the temptation to commit the sin of pride. This particular
sin is traditionally ascribed to Lucifer for feeling superior to God and attempting to
overthrow Him in the Fall of Demons which some Christians believe to have brought chaos
and natural evil onto the earth in the form of Fallen Angels. Thus Donne could also be
suggesting that the work Death does interrupts the intended order of things and wreaks
chaos.


Conversely, at the beginning of ‘Good Friday 1613 Riding Westward,’ Donne draws on
cosmological imagery to represent a person’s soul as a “sphere” which, when guided by the
concept of “intelligence” might follow its rightful orbit in the solar system. However, our
souls risk yielding to the temptation of sin which Donne regards as “foreign motion,” causing
us to deviate from our true paths. Temporal concerns like “Pleasure or business” creates a

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