Preview

Batter My Heart Three Person God

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
283 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Batter My Heart Three Person God
This poem is a fourteen line poem.
Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV "Batter My Heart Three Personed God" is his earnest plea to his Creator, the Three In One God, The Holy Trinity, Father Son and Holy Spirit, to deliver him from the clutches of evil Satan and ensure his eternal salvation.
Donne uses a remarkable simile-"like an usurpt town"-to describe his pitiable sinful condition of slavery to sin and how his conscience and reason have been completely overwhelmed by Satan and hence cannot set him free. The only way he can be saved is, the Triune God should "batter"-smash through-the gates of the captive town, his heart and release him from the clutches of Satan and save his soul. He wants God to completely smash him into smithereens and then rebuild his life anew all over again.
In the sestet Donne uses the metaphor of "betrothal" to indicate that he is enslaved to satan and that only if God divorces him and "breaks that knot again" he will be really free. The three concluding paradoxes-"imprison," "enhrall" and "ravish"-forcefully emphasize the idea that only if God imprisons and enslaves and ravishes him, he will become free and pure and holy once again.
The diction and the rhythm of the poem is harsh to underscore the initial process of demolishing the old man before the new man is created. The alliterative phrase "break, blow, burn" jarringly reminds the readers of this destructive tendency. More significantly, "break" and "knock"symbolise the raw brutality of God the Father; "blow" and "breathe" symbolise the fiery Holy Spirit; and "burn" and "shine" symbolise the dazzing quality of Jesus the Son of
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    'the Glass Jar' by Gwen Harwood and 'Ariel' by Sylvia Plath Speech
    • 1169 Words
    • 5 Pages

    'the Glass Jar' by Gwen Harwood and 'Ariel' by Sylvia Plath Speech

    We see that the child’s innocent idealistic world is contrasted with his fear of ‘dream and darkness’. This poem gains its power through the child’s fear, which he attempts to overcome by trapping sunlight in a glass jar. The sun is used alongside biblical intertextuality as a pun to the ‘the resurrected [son]’ Jesus Christ, who throughout his life ‘blessed’ and ‘exorcised monsters’ and demons, together with ‘the [sons] disciples’. Biblical reference is further used throughout the poem to parallel the story of Jesus’ suffering and resurrection with the child‘s painful experience, causing maturation and his awakening the following day in a new consciousness.…

    • 1169 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Allegory of the Cave vs. Young Goodman Brown
    • 955 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Allegory of the Cave vs. Young Goodman Brown

    This passage shows how he was wanting so badly to see the good, but yet the prison walls lock in the darkness that follows him. He struggles everyday…

    • 955 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Car Radio, a 2 Page Essay on Tyler Joseph's Choice of Words
    • 535 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Car Radio, a 2 Page Essay on Tyler Joseph's Choice of Words

    The next line is “My lungs will fill and then deflate.” This line adds a bit of humanity to the song after the previous line which is pointing to God. It adds humanity because breathing is something done by humans in order to live. It also brings in this idea that one is alive because of the “my” in front of the word, lungs. From this, it can be concluded that lungs can represent life. The next two lines are “They fill with fire” and “Exhale Desire.” The “they” refers to the lungs. The fire refers to God. This can be proven because in the bible, fire symbolizes God many times. For example, in Exodus 3 when Moses talks to God through a burning bush. This fire filling the person’s lungs is symbolizing God coming into the person’s life whether it is a lot or a…

    • 535 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Wit Play Analysis
    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Wit Play Analysis

    John Donne is made up of various writing such as strong/sensual style, love poems, religious poems and latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires, and sermons. John was an author who was very passionate, yet had difficulty expressing and “to prove that glorified bodies in heaven are essentially identical to the bodies possessed on earth” as stated by Professor Ramie Targoff. Donne believes that the union of body and soul is what “makes up the man.” In Targoff’s writing, she is describing John as a very religious human being who aspires to go to heaven and be holy on earth and the afterlife. Ramie explains and describes Donne’s themes for his books, and what he wrote from a different aspect. As stated in the last paragraph of the book review, “Professor Targoff in this book succeeds in her tight and clear focus on a central topic, overt and implied, throughout Donne’s work. Her support for her arguments is generally quite convincing....” However, John’s work mostly consists of the bond between body and soul. He wrote a book taking the title of “Holy Sonnets” which did not consist of his usual writings. The book's content concludes of nineteen poems which were not published until two years after his death, in 1633. “The poems are characterized by innovative rhythm and imagery and constitute a forceful, immediate, personal, and passionate examination of Donne’s love for God, depicting his doubts,…

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
    • 255 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

    He uses a variety of metaphors to show the dark tone of this sermon. "would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock.". This explains how nothing is holding you from hell; that if you make a mistake, you will fall to hell like a rock through a spider web. "keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood." Make one mistake and an arrow may absorb the blood inside you; this is what that metaphor is showing.…

    • 255 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Johnathan
    • 334 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Johnathan

    "Consider the fearful danger you are in; it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in Hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you.... The sovereign pleasure of God, for the present, stays his rough wind; otherwise it would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing floor."…

    • 334 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    john donne and w;t
    • 786 Words
    • 2 Pages

    john donne and w;t

    Before Donne changed to his Protestant Christian faith in 1601 he believed that the meaning of life was through love. Donne ignores the reality of love and instead writes about what is outside reality, the metaphysical. In 1601 Donne secretly married a young seventeen-year-old girl by the name of Anne More. Donne wrote about how the love between him and his wife would go past this life and travel with them to the afterlife. After her death, Donne wrote “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” which describes his undying love for her. Donne made sure that his audience understood the significance of relationships, through the self-importance of "twin compasses"," thy soul, the fix'd foot", "making my circle perfect". The 17th century context is reflected in the representation of circular perfection which lifts the status of relationships. The purity of this love is also emphasised by the use of theological reference within “The Relique” with the mention of “the last busy day” and “Mary Magdelen”. As a result it is through Donne’s contextual connections within “The Relique” and “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” that one’s understanding of his poems can be developed along with the recurring theme of love.…

    • 786 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Glasgow 5th March
    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Glasgow 5th March

    In the second verse the poet uses another technique, a metaphor that emphasises the brutality of the attack…

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Les Murray, an Abosultely Ordinary Rainbow
    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Les Murray, an Abosultely Ordinary Rainbow

    In the first stanza of the poem Murray uses imagery to paint a picture in the readers mind of a busy city coming to a halt, ‘Pitt Street is baked up for almost half a mile.’ At the end of the stanza Murray again uses imagery to make the readers see a man crying. People walk by him and see him crying but they do not stop him. The man in this poem is not crying of regret or remorse but to cleanse himself of all the bad things he has experienced.…

    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Jonathan Edwards Questions
    • 338 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Jonathan Edwards Questions

    "Consider the fearful danger you are in; it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in Hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you.... The sovereign pleasure of God, for the present, stays his rough wind; otherwise it would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing floor."…

    • 338 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Johnathen Edwards
    • 480 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Johnathen Edwards

    "Consider the fearful danger you are in; it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in Hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you.... The sovereign pleasure of God, for the present, stays his rough wind; otherwise it would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing floor."…

    • 480 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Best Essays

    Introduction to the Bible
    • 2609 Words
    • 11 Pages

    Introduction to the Bible

    Even though some may say that there is nothing more to a narrative than what one may see and read on the pages before them, I believe that some stories are more than just historical narratives. For example, in the story of David and Goliath I believe that the example David sets by his faith and trust in God to give both him and Israel the victory against this ominous foe as well as David's words of wisdom to combat the menacing taunts from Goliath are more than meets the eye. In this paper, I intend to dissect this passage from the Bible by explaining where it is located, I will analyze the literary style and characteristics of this passage, and I will give a detailed and thoughtful interpretation of this passage by using the appropriate exegetical approach.…

    • 2609 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Best Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Fahrenheit 451 Themes
    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Fahrenheit 451 Themes

    In the poem he continually discusses that death is rage, a curse, etc. These inevitable fears are first introduced in the first stanza when he states, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” This first stanza opens with saying one should not give into death, and when it comes, it should come with a full life. These ideas are featured once again in the last stanza. The author reveals the true purpose about the poem in this stanza, stating, “And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” In this stanza he is saying that he believes his father should fight, and that he does not care what his father has to do to fight. Giving up the fight is like being a lawn mower in a field of gardeners, in the end those who fight have a greater…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    John Donne and William Shakespeare
    • 452 Words
    • 2 Pages

    John Donne and William Shakespeare

    In this two line ¡° One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more ; Death, thou shalt die.¡± Donne talks about awaking eternally and Death will be forever destroyed. Donne believes we will lives in heaven forever in eternal life even after Death takes away our physical form. As a result, Death is powerless and nothing to afraid of. Then, death will cease to exist, and will die.…

    • 452 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Analysis Of Seamus Heaney's Mid-Term Break
    • 1121 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Analysis Of Seamus Heaney's Mid-Term Break

    The speaker says, that his “In the porch I met my father crying– / He had always taken funerals in his stride–” (4-5). The phrasing here is very interesting because at first we may think that the father is crying, however, as we see by the use of dashes the speaker is, in fact, the one who is crying. The third line of this stanza is of particular note; “And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow” (6). The phrase “hard blow” is a figure of speech and has some weight to it, it not only refers to the emotional turmoil of losing a child but also to the cause of the child's death. This idea can be connected later when the speaker says that the child is “Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, / He lay in the four foot box as in his cot. / No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.” (18-20). This stanza makes it clear that it was indeed a “hard…

    • 1121 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics