"Death, be not proud"

“Death, be not proud” is truly intriguing due to the fact that its author, John Donne, proposes a view of death that does not typically seem to be taken in most poems. Generally, a majority of the poems that I have ever read concerning death regard death as though it were a powerful and almighty entity. Death in and of itself was so powerful that no man was capable of escaping it, regardless of race, social status, religion, etc. Because death is an inescapable experience which all humans must face, death is typically viewed and described in poems to be a very formidable and powerful reality. However, through the use of critical diction and apostrophe, Donne greatly demeans death, detracting from its glorified image as an unavoidable and fearsome experience. For starters, employing apostrophe and addressing death directly greatly takes away from the perceived greatness of death. Rather than regarding death as something so powerful (if not sacred) that it cannot be addressed, Donne confronts death with a direct attack that death has little superiority for which to be boastful. Furthermore, Donne’s utilization of critical diction provides further support for his belief that death has little to take pride in. For example, Donne refers to death as “poor” death, indicated that it is something to be pitied rather than feared. Furthermore, Donne remarks that, “Thou are slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” (Donne, 971). Death is typically described in poems as a very potent entity which no man can escape, which promotes anxiety in the reader regarding death; however, by personifying death as a slave in this piece of the passage, Donne portrays death to be an entity of limited power or influence. Because slaves were seen as inferior to their owners, the fact that death would be a slave to even the most desperate of mean greatly detracts from its influence over mankind. Donne demeans death most effectively when, in the last line of the poem, he asserts, “Death, thou shalt die” (Donne, 972). The idea that death itself could actually be overcome and “die” is a mind-boggling concept which very few people have presumably considered before. However, the fact that death could actually be vanquished by dying is very significant to detracting from the perception that death is formidable. Because death is portrayed as being so weak that it could be diminished by the very thing that made it powerful, Donne effectively proves in “Death, be not proud” that death does not in fact have any logical reasons to be feared.