Donne's Struggle: World vs. Spirit

“Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you” by John Donne is the fourtteenth of his many famous Holy Sonnets, published between the years 1609 and 1611. In the poem, John Donne makes a personal address to God seeking forgiveness for his recent descent into sin. Rather than adopting the accepted method of addressing God with humility and respect, however, Donne bluntly makes his requests, with almost a sense of entitlement, but yet without arrogance; rather the speaker’s directness adds to his sense of desperation. His poem reflects both the realism of his metaphysical background and his deeply religious background both as a Catholic and later as an Anglican. Donne’s use of strong, vivid imagery gives the reader a brief glance into the tortured state of his soul, one torn between his duty to God and the outer pull of the world’s sins that direct him away from divine guidance.

Throughout the poem, Donne employs harsh images of destruction to demonstrate the hopelessness of his situation, one he believes he can only overcome with the violence and wrath of God. The sonnet was written at the peak of Donne’s struggle between the material and spiritual world, immediately before his ordainment, and his attempts to flee the temptation of carnal love. The employment of the destructive diction refers to Donne’s strong conviction that he himself must be punished into order to gain forgiveness from God. God’s past attempts, presented in the second line, to save his soul from superficiality have been “knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend,” none of which have been strong enough to heal the speaker’s ailing soul. With these peaceful words, Donne implies the inadequacy of God’s past attempts; breathing and shining are involuntary while seeking and knocking truly produce no change. Donne therefore asks Him to make full use of His almighty Power, so that the force of God in the speaker's soul can outweigh that of material enticement. The speaker takes the form of fortress under siege; he asks God to “batter his heart” as an army would batter down the gates of a city. Donne wants God to take complete control of his soul, to “imprison” him, to be “captive” under God’s force. The juxtaposition of the frail diction of the second lines next to the heavy language of Donne’s entreaty, words such as “batter” and “o’erthrow” in the rest of the poem, creates intensity in the speaker’s desperate tone. However, it is the complex subject matter that prevails in the mind of the reader.

In the second half of “Batter my heart” after the turn of the poem, the speaker employs paradoxes in order to justify his begging for violence. First, he professes his love for God but then immediately confronts his betrothal to the “enemy.” But is his enemy the pull of the earthly world, Satan himself, or reason? Though reason generally protects man from evil, Donne sees his self-proclaimed foe as the force that fooled him into trust and abstract betrothal, the entity that now prevents Donne from complete submission to God’s power, causing Donne to enter an even more helpless state. Though Donne entered into the relationship with reason, he now begs God to “divorce him, untie or break that knot” so that he can be completely won over by divinity. However, simple divorce from sin and reason cannot completely separate Donne from the temptation of carnal desire. To express the true nature of his needs, Donne uses paradoxes in the final couplet to form a solution of sorts. The speaker must be “enthralled,” or enslaved, to be free; be “ravished,” or raped, in order to be pure. Donne pleads for ways to forget about earthly pleasures, for substitutes for his human desires, such as the company of his wife. Not only reason prevents him from total surrender to God’s love; the inability to cease desire also hinders the process. Donne wants a relationship with God, but he wants a reciprocal relationship, and he is unsure God can give the love and pleasure he yearns for. In order for him to abandon reason, he needs proof his sacrifice is worth it, however sacrilegious that is.

“Batter my heart” is filled with images of love, sex, and destruction, but at its core lies Donne’s life-long devotion to religion. The diction drives Donne’s poem to new levels, allowing interpretation to abound and the real emotion of his struggle to be evoked. The thought-provoking metaphors and paradoxes add a completely different dimension unavailable with straight-forward language. Overall, the poem is about a man struggling between two strong forces as he moves unto a new path; though divinity won in the end, he never truly gave up the pleasures of earthly love and gratification in his marriage, or most significantly the reason to guide him in his daily life. (803)

Lolita: Creeper Status

I have decided to read and analyze Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov for my paper. I chose this book because it sounded like a unique, dark topic that would provide many interesting topics to focus on. The back cover of my copy especially intrigued me during the period of time I was deciding between Lolita, Love in the Time of Cholera, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The back cover drew me in with its brief allusions to obsession, devouring, heartbreak and doomed passion and the novel’s discussion of the many good and evil effects of love.

I am a little more than half way through the novel at this point, just entering Part II. My initial reaction was one of disturbance but intrigue, and these feelings only grow as I delve further into its contents. Obviously Humbert Humbert is a troubled man with endless love and amazement for nymphets, especially his own. However, I think there is also a lot to be said about his lack of real human connection. Though his life revolves around his obsession with his connection with his little nymphet Lolita, he lacks any real appreciation for any of the other human life in his daily existence or past and shows little emotion in regard to the loss of past seemingly-important individuals in his life. Also, through the relationship between Lolita and Humbert, Nabokov explores the nature and limitations (or lack of thereof) of desire and obsession. Obviously, I do not know exactly what I am talking about, just a few ideas, but I have entire section to finish and I hear it the more interesting and “action-packed” of the two. (276)