Sonnet 116 Analysis Essay

Sonnet 116 is a Shakespearean sonnet based on the most ideal form of love. Shakespeare tells us in this poem what love is and what it isn’t. The poem praises the glories of lovers who have come to each other and enter a relationship based on trust and understanding. This poem could be used as a guide for lovers as it describes love in great depth. Childhood is the normally the most wonderful part of anyone’s life for the parent or the child however this is very different in “Mother in a refugee camp”. Chinua Achebes ‘Mother in a reguee camp” tells the story of a mother holding her son for the last time and tells about the grief and inescapability of death. The poem describes the experiences and horrific conditons of women and children inside

Sonnet 116 has 14 lines divided into three stanzas of four lines each and a final couplet. Shakespeare sticks to a very specific style in his writings which writers in his time also followed. The structure is fairly specific with each quatrain telling us what love is and what it isn’t and the last couplet reasserting this. The first few lines are very explosive and start with a prompt pace and no pauses like a syntactic unit, which restates to the reader that love is everlasting. The first quatrain asserts that love is undying and everlasting and will not “alter when it alteration finds” and is an “ever-fix’d mark”. Love is the directing compass to any nomadic ship and can withstand any epidemics. The second quatrain boards on a series of metaphors to further conclude the power of love is imminent. The final couplet is a fairly heavy stake as Shakespeare “"If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved." Meaning if he’s wrong the then no man ever loved and he never wrote poetry. A mother in a refugee camp is the most different from all other poems in this essay as it’s a free verse. The poem is