The weakness known as "Death"

The sonnet “Death Be Not Proud” by John Donne celebrates the notion of life vividly while staring death in the eye fearlessly. It is a beautiful poem that teaches readers to cherish their own life as well as not fear death. Death is generally portrayed as a terrifying thing, because the last thing anyone wants to do is die. However, Donne challenges that belief by arguing that people do not need to fear death because when people die, they move on to another plain while death disappears forever. Donne argues that if anyone truly dies when a person passes away, it is death, not the individual.

From the very beginning of this sonnet, the speaker challenges the notion of death with the first quatrain. They say “Death be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so” (Lines 1-2). The speaker powerfully addresses death, telling it that it has nothing to be “proud” of, and that while many have called death “mighty and dreadful,” it really is not. The speaker continues and says “For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow, / Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me” (3-4). Here the speaker is telling death that even though it may think it has claimed the lives of so many people, it really has not because when people pass on they move to another plain. They do not fade away into nothingness, according to the speaker’s argument. On top of that, death cannot kill anyone because death must wait for the individual to grow old, or take a mortal wound and such. Death cannot deliberately cause any of these things, and therefore cannot truly kill anyone. Death must wait for people, not vice versa.

The second quatrain continues the verbal assault on death, using metaphors to express what death must feel like. The speaker compares death to sleep, claiming that “From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, / Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow” (5-6). This wonderfully put together set of lines makes a rather matter-of-fact argument against death. The speaker argues that sleep, which is considered just a snapshot of what death is like, is very pleasurable for people. That said, if death is truly “eternal sleep,” then the pleasure of death must be much greater than sleeping itself. It may seem like a silly argument, but the author was most likely using this to counter the stereotypical idea of what death is really like. Donne basically said that if death really is just a never-ending nap, then it does not sound all that bad. The next lines take this argument even further as the speaker says, “And soonest our best men with thee do go, / Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery” (7-8). The speaker ridicules death here, claiming that when the best of men pass on their souls will be delivered to whatever heavenly plain the speaker sees. It is a very powerful statement, as it is arguing that even when death greets people, all death will do is grant them safe passage to the next realm, which the author must see as a pure and blissful place. For the speaker, there is nothing to fear in death, and he continues to butcher it brutally throughout the sonnet.

The final quatrain added with a couplet completely demolish any notion that death should be regarded as a powerful object in which people should cower in fear from. The speaker starts by saying, “[Death] art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, / and dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell” (9-10). The speaker all but slaps death in the face here, saying that death cannot take charge of people’s lives in any way whatsoever. Instead, death is a “slave” to all these other things that cause people to die. Such a weak thing should not be feared by others. Not only that, but the speaker claims that death sleeps with “poison, war, and sickness,” as if to say that if death is such a powerful and omnipotent being, then why does it bed with such distasteful things? Donne brilliantly uses these powerful words to provide explicit imagery of what death truly looks like to the reader, and then uses it to back up his argument that death should not be revered at all. If that was not bad enough, the speaker belittles death’s power by saying “And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well, / And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?” (11-12). The speaker compares the power of death to drugs that can kill people, and do it much faster than waiting for death to come around. Therefore, why does death’s pride swell so much when it is as weak, if not weaker, than something as small as a pill? The final couplet of this sonnet really delivers the ultimate blow to death: “One short sleep past, we wake eternally, / And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die” (13-14). The speaker is saying that once people do pass on, they wake up eternally in heavenly bliss after a “short sleep.” And after they do wake up, there will no longer be such a thing as death, and therefore it is death that dies in the end, not the individual. It is a very powerful statement that Donne strewed together beautifully to defy the fear of death once and for all.

Several critics have discussed this sonnet as well, and interpretations vary greatly despite the overall straightforwardness of the text. Frederic Tromly, the author of “Milton Responds to Donne: ‘On Time’ and ‘Death Be Not Proud’,” argues that “After his triumphant opening assertion of victory over Death, the speaker’s certainty falters, and he proceeds to engage in casuistical and contradictory arguments with Death. Thus, he claims unconvincingly that Death must be more pleasant than rest and sleep because they are merely ‘pictures’ of Death, but then he suddenly shifts to argue that Death is a despicable slave who dwells ‘with poison, war, and sickness’.” Tromly makes a valid argument, but the reason why the speaker compared death to sleep in the first place is because people generally call death “eternal sleep.” It is not that the speaker believes that it is truly eternal, it was more of a counter-argument to the idea, as if to say “why, if death is eternal slumber, and sleeping feels great, then death must be wonderful!” What the speaker truly believes is that death dwells with things such as “poison, war, and sickness,” as these things are what lead to death. Though Tromly’s argument is understandable, the speaker did not contradict him or herself once during this sonnet. Norman Vance, author of “Donne’s ‘Death Be Not Proud’ and The Book of Homilies” compares the lines in the text to religious texts such as the Corinthians: “As modern editors have noted, ‘Death Be Not Proud,’ Donne’s Holy Sonnet on the death of death, draws on and dramatizes 1 Corinthians 15, particularly verse 26, ‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’.” The lines are similar, but not once in Donne’s sonnet was God or religion mentioned by the speaker, save for maybe the idea of afterlife, but that is debatable. The speaker is strictly discussing death and what it really looks like when all the mist as cleared. Yes, it is possible that Donne was inspired by some religious text, but he is not trying to advocate some sort of spiritual point to his readers. He is strictly discussing the relationship between man and death, and how man perceives death to be something far grander and more powerful than it actually is, nothing more and nothing less.

“Death Be Not Proud” is a fantastic piece of work that advocates the defiance of death. People do not need to live their whole lives in fear of dying, which is simply what Donne was trying to show his readers with this sonnet. If people live their lives in constant fear, then very little will get done, and such a life can and will be judged as meaningless. Donne wants his readers to embrace life and enjoy it for what it is. When their time does come, he wants them to look death in the eye, smirk, and punch him in the face.

Works Cited

Donne, John. "Death Be Not Proud." 100 Best-Loved Poems. Ed. Philip Smith. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995. Print.

Tromly, Frederic B. "Milton Responds to Donne: "On Time" and "Death Be Not Proud"." Modern Philology 80.4 (1983): 390-3.

Vance, Norman. "Donne's "Death Be Not Proud" and the Book of Homilies." Notes and Queries 254.1 (2009): 75-6.