Top-Rated Free Essay
Preview

Freedom From Slavery

Better Essays
1399 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Freedom From Slavery
Freedom from Slavery
Metaphysical poetry arose in the 17th century and was adopted by John Donne who wrote poems that featured topics such as love, life, and God. As a result, Donne had become the leading poet of Metaphysical poetry, but it was not soon after that that a poet named George Herbert associated himself with parallel metaphysical topics, God, most importantly. Both Herbert and Donne effectively depict the relationship and power dynamic between the creator and the creation. In Herbert’s “The Collar” and Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 14” the relationship between God and humans is expressed similarly. Herbert and Donne create speakers that experience a struggle with their faith in God. Both speakers give into the temptation of sin but eventually become devout to God in the end. Both poets use effective diction and portray their speakers with the notion of being enslaved to either God or Satan. They utilize the paradox that the only way that the speakers can set free from sin is if God takes action to make us his slaves. One must be enslaved to God in order to feel free.
Prior to reading “The Collar,” Herbert provides the audience with a title that supports the meaning of the poem. The title is important because it’s an image that symbolizes the position of the speaker. ‘The collar’ in this poem refers to the white band worn by priests in the clergy; therefore it is understood that the speaker is a priest. The poem presents a rather dramatic opening scene suggesting that the speaker is unhappy with his position as a priest. The speaker desires to leave the clergy and become a famous poet, and for that reason takes on violent action as he cries, “I struck the board, and cried, "No more;/ I will abroad” (Herbert lines 1-2). Impatient with his role as a priest, the speaker has thought of himself as a slave to the demanding Lord. He begins to regret devoting his life to the lord and wonders what it would have been like if he hadn’t. He compares his life to that of those humans who experience worldly pleasures. He desires to be a poet and believes he deserves the right to crown himself as a recognized and famous one. He wants to be able to understand this pleasure and be worthy of attention and fortune,
Have I no bayes to crown it?
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted? All wasted (14-16)?
At this point, he has given into the temptation of sin and from this it is apparent that he is full of pride and envy. He is jealous of those who are pleasured and he is confident that his poetry is good enough to be famous. Herbert chooses to allow the speaker to complain more and more in order to explain how close the speaker is to leaving and living a life of what he thinks will give him freedom and pleasure. It seems as if nothing will change his mind, and given that free will exists, the speaker recognizes that he is free, but for some reason does not feel free. This is why he tries so hard to convince himself that to able to feel free he must leave the clergy and become a famous poet,
My lines and life are free; free as the rode,
Loose as the winde, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit (4-6)? “I will abroad” is mentioned multiple times through out the poem. Herbert uses the device of repetition in order to make emphasis on how close the speaker is to following the path of Satan and becoming his slave. Herbert also introduces several types of imagery that reflect on this idea of the speaker being a slave. The collar not only suggests the speaker’s position in the church, but it also suggests a collar that humans use to strap around animals in order to control them. The idea of a slave is continued as Herbert says, “Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage, /Thy rope of sands”(21-22). The imagery of cages and ropes is effective because it supports this idea that the speaker feels God is using invisible control elements to enslave him. Little does the speaker know that he must be enslaved to God in order to feel free.
At the peak of his anger, the priest hears a voice calling “Childe,” the speaker replies “My lord” and in that moment the speaker submits himself to the lord. He recognizes his position as a priest and his relationship with God strengthens. God saves him from the temptation of sin by the sound of his voice, which allows the speaker to surrender to God. Instead of ultimately leaving the clergy and becoming a slave to Satan, the speaker has been saved by the words of God and continues to be a slave to him.
Similarly to “The Collar,” Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 14”opens with a sense of intensity also. The speaker appears angry and demands, “Batter my heart, three-person'd God…”(Donne line1). The speaker wants God to restore his soul, not gently, but belligerently. The speaker is struggling because he not sure if God loves him and this struggle uncovers a form of power dynamic between the speaker and God. The speaker wants God to have all the power, which is why the speaker demands him to belligerently and powerfully make him feel like he loves him. Donne’s use of powerful diction reveals this same idea. This powerful diction includes words such as, force, break, blow, and burn, “Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new” (4). These words mentioned suggest violence and the idea that the speaker is determined to be loved and be overpowered by God. The speaker recognizes that he is currently following the path of Satan and says to God, “Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
/But am betroth'd unto your enemy;”(9-10). In this quote Herbert introduces a strange metaphor. Donne compares the speaker’s relationship with Satan as a marriage and follows it by telling God, “Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again”(11). This metaphor clarifies how serious the relationship between the speaker and Satan has become due to the idea that marriage is considered the closest you can become in a relationship. The speaker realizes his position and demands the attention from God because he would rather be a prisoner of God than of Satan, “Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free”(12-13). In this quote, the idea of slavery is finally introduced and the speaker solves his problem by asking God to enslave him. This quote is also paradoxical, because if he is a slave to God he is free and feels free. In the last quote, “Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me” (14), the speaker is telling God that he cannot be pure unless God rapes him, this enhances the idea of power dynamic because Donne is once again giving God the power to enslave him.
Both poems consist of powerful yet violent diction that represents the paradoxical relationship between the human and the divine. Both speakers ether experience life as a slave to God or life with the desire to experience it, ether way, God’s actions influence whether or not that experience is experienced. The priest is a slave to God and doesn’t feel free, therefore, God directly calls to him. This call reminds him that he is already free as a slave to God, and would rather be a slave to him than of to Satan. The speaker in “Holy Sonnet 14” is a slave to Satan and begs for God to take action, aggressively love him, and take him away from Satan, and like the priest, be a slave to God. Although Donne’s speaker demands to be loved by God while Herbert’s speaker demands to unleash himself from God, both poems do not introduce the idea of slavery until towards the end. They wait until the end of the poem to signify the importance of the constant paradox.
Whether one pushes against the love of God or wants his love more than anything, God will be there to enslave you, or in other words, allow you to feel free.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Slavery

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Does Betheny’s marriage feel like a real marriage? What challenges did she and Jerry face in attempting to live like a married couple?…

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    During the Enlightenment, American colonies and established European countries faced the difficulties of shifting economic system, religious system, and a shift in mindset. The monarchs of the European countries used enlightened ideas in order to advance. Colonization was at its peak and the rise of mercantilism and the price revolution broke its breaks. Due to the shifting economic structure, slaves were utilized as an alternative to paid laborers. This however, was not reasonable from the perspective of the enlightened. They viewed it as unreasonable, selfish, and manipulative. The supporters of slavery argued that slaves were a necessity in the shifting economic structure. Supporters also argued that slavery wasn’t as severe as it was…

    • 981 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    American Slavery

    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, writes of the incident when he defends himself against the cruel Mr. Covey. Harriet A. Jacobs also writes in her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, of the time she decides to escape from her owners. Spirituals were extremely emotional songs that were often sung by American slaves. Harriet Tubman, a famous "conductor" or guide that helped free slaves, was interviewed and her stories were published of what she as an abolitionist went through. One similarity they all have is after being pushed too far, they resist against their suppressors.…

    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The topic of the abolition of slavery in the 1800's was a big controversial issue, there were people supporting slavery and people against it. During the abolition movement there was the formation of several abolition groups with different manners of tackling the task of fighting for the freedom of slaves. There were two distinct categories the groups tactics for accomplishing this task fell under, moral persuasion, and violence. Two of the abolition groups fell under the moral persuasion category, the very first abolition group to be formed was The American Colonization Society in 1817 led by William Lloyd Garrison, the groups tactic was to have slave owners voluntary free their slaves and receive money from the society. From there they prepared…

    • 1003 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Slavery. A conflict many African Americans like Frederick Douglass faced throughout their lifetime. Some kneeled down to slavery, and some stood up and fought against it. Douglass was one of those who fought. He fought hard every single day to become a free man. He faced many circumstances during his slave time, but let none of it get in the way of his freedom. He was a strong, determined, and intellectual African American who knew what he wanted and would let nothing or no one stand in his way of achieving it.…

    • 1530 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    American Slavery

    • 1073 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In “Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake 1680- 1800” the main theme is the outcome of a long-term economic, demographic, and political transformation that replaced the farmsteads of the first Chesapeake settler with the kind of slave society described by modern historians. After a brief study of the social structure of the region in the seventeenth century, this work analyzed the economic and demographic change between 1680 and 1750. The change that took place described how men and women, and blacks and whites bogus new social relations in the mid-eighteenth century slowly changed. Including economic and social changes, such as, disruptive events as the transition from tobacco monoculture to diversified farming and the massive out-migration of whites and their slaves. With this transformation, it related the history of impersonal shifts in demography and economic life to the rise of new forms of power and understanding. 1…

    • 1073 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Slavery

    • 1112 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Slave as defined by the dictionary means that a slave is a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another; a bond servant. So why is it that every time you go and visit a historical place like the Hampton-Preston mansion in Columbia South Carolina, the Lowell Factory where the mill girls work in Massachusetts or the Old town of Williamsburg Virginia they only talk about the good things that happened at these place, like such things as who owned them, who worked them, how they were financed and what life was like for the owners. They never talk about the background information of the lower level people like the slaves or servants who helped take care and run these places behind the scenes. It’s like many things in life; people only want to hear about the good things that come with these places because they might not be able to handle the whole truth. But when talking about history we have to be able to learn from each other’s mistakes from the past, but we must not only teach about the good but also teach about the bad material as well, like how the mill girls were treated and how the slave and servants were treated at Williamsburg and the Hampton- Preston Mansion.…

    • 1112 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the beginning, many slaves had a tough time being free. Being a slave was all that they knew, and “freedom” would become a big adjustment, especially when your mind is stilled enslaved. These former slaves had no home, no jobs and they could not read and write. Unfortunately, the only skill that they knew was farming or domestic work. Some former slaves went back to what was familiar, the plantation and plantations owners. Others received assistance from the Freedom Bureau. This Bureau provided them with food, medical care and helped to find them places to live and work. Those blacks that lived in the South enjoyed their freedom for a few years. Their brief period of freedom, they owned their own homes, and they were even voting…

    • 160 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Slavery in America

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages

    From the 15th to the 19th century, European's brought slaves from the west central, and East…

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Slavery in America stems well back to when the New World was first discovered and was led by the country to start the African Slave Trade- Portugal. The African Slave Trade was first exploited for use on plantations in what is now called the Caribbean, and eventually reached the southern coasts of America. The African natives were of all ages and sexes. Women usually worked in the homes, cooking and cleaning, whereas men were sent out into the plantations to farm. Young girls would usually help in the house also and young boys would help in the farm by bailing hay and loading wagons with crops. Since trying to capture the native Indians, the Arawaks and Caribs, failed (Small Pox had killed them instead), the Europeans said out to capture…

    • 1511 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Abolishment of Slavery was completely ratified on December 6th, 1865 and was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865. On January 1, 1863 president Lincoln finalized the document that would hold anyone from holding slaves.(The Emancipation Proclamation) Although his speech and document was not stopping people. He knew that he needed support from the constitutional amendment for slavery to be completely stopped. The 13th amendment was passed at the end of the civil war, although the senate passed it in April 1864 the house did not. President Lincoln had a plan to add it to the Republican Party Platform for the upcoming election. The plan worked and the house passed the bill in 1865 with a vote of 119-56. This has affected America today because…

    • 196 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Architectural imagery takes place in a number of Herbert’s poetry. In The Temple, the opening poem is titled The Altar and the very shape of the poem suggests an altar of worship. The poems structure is in an AABB rhyme scheme and has…

    • 1550 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The freedom to live

    • 645 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Gandhi once said, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind', very much truth can be found in this statement. Is it really moral to give the same punishment to someone that we are punishing them for? The death penalty is a very touchy subject to most for a good reason, in my eyes the death penalty is injustice. For reasons such as money, religion, the principal of knowing right from wrong as well as the wrongly accused, and the prolonging suffering of the victims’, families and loved ones. Promoting the death penalty as a punishment promotes that killing is an okay solution to a difficult problem, that’s not something I wish to teach our youth.…

    • 645 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    "The Flower" by George Herbert is an exuberant, joyful poem in which a single image of the spiritual life is expanded with naturalness and elegance that appear effortless. Herbert refines a style in which the writer tries to write honestly and directly from experience: his imagery is more homely and accessible than John Donne's: if nothing is too exotic for inclusion in Donne's verse, nothing is too ordinary for inclusion in Herbert's. But this has the result that Herbert's images are, generally, more intelligible to the modern reader.…

    • 1033 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    English Assigment 1

    • 809 Words
    • 3 Pages

    2. The poem was meant to leave a lasting impression through graphic details comparisons and religion. Religion self-association and gruesome scenes effective ways to get someone to remember what their were doing was wrong. This poem was to instill guilt into the slave owners. The owners told their slaves about God and made a point to state that worshiped God it was instructed to them to deny God was wrong. In the passage of the poem the speaker brings up the God and makes it a point to state that it was the slaves’ owners that taught the slaves about God. God was taught as being a loving God and Merciful God to the slaves. The speaker points out that the slave owners were contradicting themselves to their teachings about religion and by treating their slaves the way that their did and even enslaving them in the first place. The second and third stanza of the poem states “skins may differ but affection Dwell in white and black the same Think ye masters iron-hearted lolling at your jovial…

    • 809 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays