Death Be Not Proud by John Donne
An Analysis of Donne's Divine Sonnet X
In "Death be not proud" (Divine Sonnet X), Donne turns his rhetorical skills on his greatest poetic adversary - death itself.
“Divine Sonnet X” by John Donne is one of his best-known religious poems. It famously begins “Death be not proud” and advances a stream of arguments to prove that man’s greatest fear has no power over him.
Apostrophe
The opening line, “Death be not proud”, is an apostrophe or address to an abstract figure. Donne favours apostrophes and dramatic monologues, which give an immediacy and urgency to his rhetoric – in his career as a churchman, Donne was a famous preacher, so it’s no surprise that many of his poems sound like dramatic speeches. In rhetorically picking on death, Donne is taking on a big adversary, though not entirely without precedent. There is an echo in the opening of St. Paul’s famous demand in 1Corinthians 15:55, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
Arguments
Rather than developing a single line of logic, Donne throws several arguments at Death to try to humble it. “those whom thou think’st thou dost ovethrow/ Die not” he declares, without fully explaining what he means at this point. “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 – and in any case “soonest our best men with thee do go”; if the good die young, why should anyone want to avoid it?
In a brilliant turn of argument, 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. Its habitat is amongst “poison, war and sickness”, a realm which no-one would want to rule. This is typical Donne: grandiose, verbally aggressive, and picking up any argument, however specious or inconsistent, which can serve to support his cause. He even goes so far as to patronize the Grim Reaper, calling it “poor death” and demanding “why swell’st thou then?”
Conclusion
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 for Christians, death is merely the beginning of eternal life: “one short sleep past, we live eternally.” He encapsulates this in an even shorter phrase in the last line, mingling the consolation of the Christian faith with a paradox, and triumphing “Death will be more no more, death, thou shalt die.”
