John Donnes Holy Sonnets

The Holy Sonnets By making many references to the Bible, John Donne’s Holy Sonnets reveal his want to be accepted and forgiven by God. A fear of death without God’s forgiveness of sins is conveyed in these sonnets. Donne expresses extreme anxiety and fright that Satan has taken over his soul and God won’t forgive him for it or his sins. A central theme of healing and forgiveness imply that John Donne, however much he wrote about God and being holy, wasn’t such a holy man all of the time and tried to make up for it in his writing.
In sonnet 1, the speaker is talking to God. He tells God that his death is near. He feels that with all of the sins he has committed he ...

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don’t help me to become holy again.” This starts out the sonnet with a bitter tone, a favorable way for Donne to begin. But in the end, the speaker is pleading God to give him wings, ending the sonnet with a sense of desperation. The worried tone of the last few lines is a rather common one in the Holy Sonnets. It exhibits the recurring theme of fear and need for acceptance.
The speaker in sonnet 5 starts off by using the metaphor that he is a world. He is made craftily and “of an angelike sprite;” implying holiness. He then goes on to say that he has sinned and needs both parts of his world to be cleansed and renewed. He asks God to give him more seas, a world’s tears continuing the metaphor, to wash his sin away. Then the speaker makes a Bible reference. He asks the Lord to burn him. It is said in the Bible that the end of the world will be caused by fire. This reference is saying that the speaker wants God to destroy his world now so that he can ...

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John Donnes Holy Sonnets. (2008, January 10). Retrieved March 19, 2019, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/John-Donnes-Holy-Sonnets/77256

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Added: 1/10/2008 08:15:26 AM
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 1080
Pages: 4

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