Analysis Of John Donne s Holy Sonnet Xiv - 1976 Words

In Holy Sonnet XIV, John Donne directly addresses God using a desperate and forceful tone. The formal structure of Donne s holy sonnet follows the basic Petrarchan sonnet form. The sonnet has fourteen lines divided into an octave and a sestet. The rhyme scheme of the octave is abba abba. The sestet has the rhyme scheme cdcdee. Donne expresses his spiritual turmoil and longing by using this structure to present different metaphors that illustrate his condition, and he uses Petrarchan conventions to further highlight his spiritual desires. The octave introduces and illustrates the spiritual difficulty that Donne finds himself in trapped in, and wants God to take him out of. The first line starts with Donne s desperate and urgent command to God to batter or violently beat his heart (1). Donne uses the metaphor of his heart as a metal object, and God as a metal smith to support this command. Donne s heart is a broken object that the metal smith has gently stroked, breathed on to shin e, and polished, in order to fix the broken parts. However, Donne claims that this is not enough. The metal smith needs to break, blow, burn in order to make the object new (4). The metal smith must apply more force to shatter the object, and then place it into the fire to melt, so the metal can be purified and new. Donne seems to be telling God that his heart is too broken by sin to be mended through God s normal ways of opening the heart to faith again. God needs to bend