"Sonnet 129" takes a rather pessimistic approach to sex and lust. In the poem, the "spirit" which drives man's "lust" is described vividly as "perjured, murderous, bloody," like a criminal whose behavior is driven by madness. Indeed, lust is "savage, extreme, rude, cruel," and absolutely not something that should be trusted. The use of language conjures images of a bestial creature within man and separate from him.
Lust is something that is "hunted" "past reason," until such time as the hunter has achieved his goal, after which he despises his own lust (and, possibly, the object of his lust) as if he has been offered "bait / On purpose laid to make the taker mad." So, after man has expended his lust and regained his reason, he comes to despise whatever caused him to lose his reason in the first place, imagining it as some kind of poison laid out in an appealing way for him to consume.
The concluding couplet aptly summarizes the problem of lust: men know that "this hell" is what will result from pursuing sex, as after they have partaken in it, they "despise" it and themselves, feeling "shame." However, they do not have the wits to shun the "heaven" (love, courtship, sex itself) which will lead them into this misery.
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
What is the imagery in "Sonnet 129"?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
A good thesis statement presents a claim (an interpretive stance on a story that can be defended using textual evidence) and is a position w...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
What does the hot air balloon symbolize? To the Assad son who buys the hot air balloon, it symbolizes a kind of whimsy that he can afford. B...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
-
Allie’s baseball mitt is extremely important to Holden in The Catcher in the Rye. It is a symbol of Allie since it was important to his brot...
No comments:
Post a Comment