Response to “The Flea”
“The flea” is a poem written by John Donne, which exhibits the author’s metaphysical skills to discuss the theme of love and sex. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker tries to lure his beloved into having sex with him and therefore compares the action with the life of a flea. He tells her, “how little that which thou deniest me,” yet the flea has already joined them. He tells her that flea sucked blood from him and from her too, and the blood has already mingled inside it. He compares the flea’s stomach with a marriage bed that joins people together after intercourse. However, he makes her realize that mingled blood will not be considered as sin “sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead.” In the middle of the poem, the girl tries to kill the flea, but he advises her against; “three lives in one flea spare.” He acknowledges the anger in his beloved and therefore tells her to spare the flea for the sake of her life, which is carried in it. He also insists their blood has already mingled more than they could do even through sex. According to the speaker, the flea now carries three lives, his, its own, that of the beloved. As such, regardless of whether the girl makes love to him or that their parents do not agree with their ongoing romance, the mingling of their drops of blood in the flea has joined them, making them almost or more than married. Failure of the lover to listen to him makes the speaker call her “Cruel and sudden,” since she killed it and purpled her nails with “blood of innocence.” He inquires from his lover, which sin the flea committed that deserved it to die. According to the speaker, she replied that it had no sin, and thus neither of them should kill it. He, therefore, uses the same response to prove to her that her fears were false, and she should sleep with him (“yield to me”), for the honor she lost when she killed the flea is more significant than what she will lose.
The poem uses the imagery of a flea to sketch an interesting discussion of whether the two should be involved in premarital sex. The speaker is intelligent enough to use the flea to show his beloved that the reasons that make mingling of blood in that insect innocuous, should also be applied to sex, since to him, the two are equal. On the contrary, the girl is against his idea, and therefore she kills the flea, which he calls “Our marriage bed and marriage temple is.” The killing of the insect by the beloved could be explained in ways that do not match those of the speaker. She could have killed it as self-defense because it sucked her blood and thus deserved punishment. Secondly, it showed that just like the flea enjoyed sucking the blood and was killed, their pleasure in bed would end, and they will also separate in the long run. This way, the girl expresses her belief that what she is being lured into is just temporary pleasure that, in the end, will cause her pain. This way, she can maintain her stand, which is “NO to premarital sex.”