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The Flea Research Paper

790 Words4 Pages
Themes within “The Flea” Salmon Rushdie once said, “A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep” (“50 Powerful Quotes About Poetry”). All throughout history, poetry has been written to portray many different aspects of life including feelings that are experienced by many human beings. When writing and reading poetry, there are always themes evident in the literature. As a writer, John Donne, wrote many things from satires and sermons to poems and epigrams. More specifically, Donne is known for his beautifully written poetry that contains themes of all kinds. One of his famous poems, “The Flea,” is out of character and slightly inappropriate for his time period furthering Rushdie’s quote of “naming the unnameable and starting arguments” (“50 Powerful Quotes About Poetry”). Donne wrote a poem portraying a persuasive act of seduction by comparing a flea to the act of love. In the poem, “The Flea,” he portrays the themes of sex, religion, and guilt with writing that not only makes the reader slightly uncomfortable but overall worried for the girl’s ability to stand strong by her faith and morals. To begin, one of the main themes within “The Flea,” is sex. Within the poem, the speaker is persuading the woman to have sex with him off of his idea that the actual act of sex has already been done within the flea that has bitten both of them. Donne showed this when he wrote:
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