Bailey Tregembo Mrs. Darrough AP English Language and Composition 28 November 2014 A closer look at John Donne’s Meditation XVII There are many different ways that an author can get different reactions from an audience in their writing. John Donne wrote one of his most famous writings Meditation XVII while severely ill around 1623. He writes about his connection to all the other people in the world. How every person will affect another person at some point. Donne chooses to get several different reactions in this piece depending on how you interpret his writing. He uses rhetorical strategies such as parallelism, figurative language, allusion, personification and more (Donne). The tone of this writing is very meditative. John Donne is talking …show more content…
He believes everything is connected. He explains how he thinks we are all one person, “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main” (Donne). This mataphor shows how every human being is connected in some way to all other human beings. He explains that if one person is hurt, this somehow will eventually hurt everyone else. Donne uses personification to show that we are all one man, and that this world cannot function unless we work together to keep our “island” afloat. In a sense I believe he is talking about how in an island, trees need water and sand, the sand needs water to become mud, and so on. Like how all humans need one another. Another example of personification in Donne’s writing is in the second paragraph when he says “The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions: all that she does belongs to all” (Donne). He explains the Catholic Church as if it is a girl. As well as this quote being personification, it also shows …show more content…
So he compares himself to this other person. Maybe this other person need the bell rang for them more than him? Once again Donne uses Personification in his writing, talking about him and this other “man” who he does not