An Analysis of Don Juan by George Gordon Byron

Response Paper I- Fragments from Don Juan, Lord Byron Don Alfonso desperately goes in search for his wife’s mistress. He looks in no other better place than in his wife’s bedroom, bringing along friends and witnesses to spectate the sin. His jealous rapports lead him to act out of love, ready to fight and kill whoever it is that is hiding within his wife’s walls. Donna Julia is found in her room and instantly demands explanations for Don Alfonso’s late disturbance. She plays the victim yet her mistress is found, hiding in the closet without his shoes tied up. Don Alfonso flees in search for his sword giving young sixteen-year-old Don Juan some time to flee. Naked and in battle, Don Juan manages to give a blow and finally manages to run away for good. On the ground and bleeding is Don Alfonso, ready for a divorce. Through the use of an animated style with a hint of cynical amusement, Lord Byron demonstrates that there is a distinct comparison between two different extremities. There’s love and jealousy that leads to the desire to kill in Don Alfonso’s case, and two sides of a person telling the truth and the lie as seen from Donna Julia’s character. Then there’s Don Juan, who at sixteen-years-old does not hesitate to establish a physical relationship with a woman old enough to be his mother. These extremes are seen all throughout the poem from beginning to end. Before Don Juan’s story is told, Lord Byron states “I would to heaven that I were so much clay, as I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, [and] feeling.” Lord Byron initiates the epic with the opposite distinctions of being delicate and made of something as simple as clay, to something so much complex and strong as is the human body. There’s also the good and the bad, life and death, new discoveries of potato bread and electric current, killing bodies and saving souls, as well as sin being a pleasure while pleasure being a sin. This sets the mood to what the epic will illustrate. Don Alfonso demonstrates