Meghan Brockmeyer

Lake

AP Literature, A4

3/5/08

Death Be Not Proud Response

Death have no pride, even though many fall victim to your powers. You think you
are so tough, but you really are powerless and pathetic. Those who you think you can
kill, you cannot, and I feel bad for you, you specifically cannot kill me. Instead of seeing
rest and sleep as your realm, I enjoy those two instead. And even our best men can enjoy
rest. You will not touch their bones; their souls will be delivered. You are only a slave to
change, fate, war, and suicidal men. And all your trickeries would be better placed back
upon you. We will overcome you, and you shall seize to exist. Death, you will die.

This poem presents itself in an apostrophe, in which the speaker is addressing

death as the abstract figure. In rhetorically picking on death, Donne is taking on a big

adversary, but he sees death’s hypocrisies and flaws and reveals them. Donne throws

multiple arguments at death, claiming that death itself will die because it is no longer

powerful. Donne declares “those whom thou think’st thou dost ovethrow/ Die not” which

explicates the powerless character death really is. “Rest and sleep” seem to be the

“pictures” of death, and these are enjoyable, he argues, so the ‘real thing’ must be even

more pleasant. Donne tells Death that it is not “mighty and dreadful” because it is merely

a functionary, a “slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate men”. Anything which can be

whistled for by so many despicable causes is hardly to be respected. Donne uses such

literary techniques as alliteration of sounds throughout his lines and irony as he stats

“Death, thou shalt die.” Death’s habitat is amongst “poison, war and sickness”, a realm

which no-one would want to rule. As the poem ends he elaborates on his earlier statement

that “those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow/ Die not...nor yet can’st thou kill
me”, by pointing out that death is merely the beginning of eternal life in his line “one

short sleep past, we live eternally.” Throughout this poem Donne makes a mockery of

death and attempts to reveal its benign nature that has been feared for ages.