This poem is structured around juxtapositions, in
particular the contrast between the microscopic flea and the bodies of the two lovers.
Contrast in size is extended into contrast in importance, as a couple of flea bites are
equated with the mingling body fluids in sex. The woman's casual gesture in killing the
flea with her fingernail is then contrasted with the extreme moral scruples that are
apparently causing her to postpone losing her
virginity.
Things to identify in this poem are the
religious vocabulary that Donne employs which give an edge to the poem as its metaphors
verge on the blasphemous. Consider this following
metaphor:
This
flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple
is.
The fluids commingling
inside the flea are thus compared to a sacred form of marriage--clearly sacrilegious in
the time of Donne. The mingling of three bloods with its "walls of jet" is an image of
containment, suggesting that the lovers' space is the only essential
reality.
However, all of these images are essentially used
to get the woman to sleep with the male, authoritative speaker. He says that the amount
of honour she will lose in sleeping with him is as trivial as the threat to her life
from the flea bite.
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