To His Coy Mistress And The Flea Essay

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To His Coy Mistress and The Flea
“The Flea” and “To His Coy Mistress” are both based on the idea of temptation; both express their views making the poems contrast to one another. John Donne’s and Andrew Marvell’s poem both use abstract views to mimic the idea of love. Donne’s poem “The Flea,” compares a woman’s virginity to a flea. Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” describes the poet’s restless desire for advancing his relationship with his mistress.
The speaker in “To His Coy Mistress” is trying to convince his mistress that it is much better to have sex sooner than to wait in the future. The speaker argues that the lady’s shyness would be acceptable, but he feels like only if they were given “world enough, and time.” (1) He believes that the woman should take advantage of losing her virginity to him. He tries to convince her that her “long- preserved virginity” (28) will only go to waste if she does not give herself to him while she lives. The …show more content…
He tells his lady that the flea has bitten them both. The speaker uses this method to persuade the woman to engage in sex. “This flea is you and I, and this our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.” (12-13) This quote from the poem demonstrates how he is using an insignificant creature and making it into a symbolic gesture of their union to convince her to have sex. Donne tries to make the flea relevant to marriage like having premarital sex is alright. When his loved one wants to kill, it he tells her that she would be committing three sins; she would be killing him, the flea, and herself. He tries to make her think that if she is so quick to kill a flea, what gives her the idea that her virginity is worth the wait. No sin is greater than the next, is what he tries to put in her head. If she kills the flea it is a sin, and she thinks nothing is wrong with that. Having sex is a sin, but all sins are equal so he wants her to give him what he
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