Joshua Moreno

Revised December 9, 2017

Professor Batty Eng.102

Blood to blood: The Flea sucks us

What is poetry? Is it just words? How should it make us feel emotions that we do

regularly? Does it inspire passion? Well, poetry to most is literature with a deeper meaning to

understand, although not many can decipher the direct purpose of the poem it gives readers ones

life? Possible in my life, or not at all. Such questions are presented to readers of poetry. What is

the deeper message poets are hoping to translate to readers? Take for instance, The Flea penned

by John Donne. Although, some might say this piece has a heavy overtone of sexual content. I

would argue that The Flea tells the story of a broken, cheated man. These ideas are produced

through use of figurative language, underlying unexpressed emotions and meaningful symbolic

language and are presented in Donnes use of beat pattern, rhyming verse, and personification.

Firstly, the poem is presented to us in an Iambic beat pattern. This case makes the

preceding beat weaker leading to a strong syllable. With regard to the beat, there is also rhymical

aspects in which lines in each stanza switch between Octo/Decameter. As such the rhythm can be

split into divisions of twos, and can be read differently which reflects the emotionality as well as

placing stress on certain words that outline my basis for considering my interpretation of The

Flea. For example, A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead, (line 6). By placing the stress

on every other word such as sin, shame, loss, etc. What the speaker is emphasizing is pain,

deceit, and longing for what has since been taken from him after the collapse of his marriage.
 Second, with every rhythm there is a sound. To me The Flea has two sounds, Assonance and

Rhyme. First stanza, lines three-four end in the vowel sounds of E this same occurrence also

happens in lines sixteen-eighteen in the next stanza, leading to lines nineteen-twenty-two, of the

final stanza all while ending in the sound of E. Coincidentally, each of the aforementioned

lines create the second sound of this piece, Rhyme. Respectively, It sucked me first, and now

sucks thee, / And in this flea our two bloods mingled be; (3-4), thee and be have the ending

singular vowel sound E while also being part of a rhyming verse. As does, Though use make

you apt to kill me / Let not to that, self-murder added be, / And sacrilege, three sins in killing

three. (16-18) and

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee? (19-22)

To my ear when reading these lines, there is a sound of loss. As the E sound phonetically does

not have an end per se. I believe the E sound to produce a feeling of loss due to the fact that

each stanza that ends with an E sound can be often associated with words that either give an

idea as to what the state of mind is in that line or points direction at whom the other whom each

line is directed too. In this case the wife is usually the topic for each line and words like

innocence, guilty, kill, and self-murder further amplify the how the speaker feels in

regard to the betrayal and resentment directed toward his wife. Which leads to the type of piece

this poem is. With respect to my interpretation this feels lyrical in a sense that there is emotion

behind each ending E sound. Anger and sadness come to mind, take for instance line three It

sucked me first, and now sucks thee. The Flea in this case has drained the speaker once
before but has since moved on signaling some form of break-up or falling out. Same can be said

for its following line, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be, again signaling there is and

was a connection on an intimate level.

Therefore, I believe the flea in this poem to be a symbol of the speakers marriage. As is

personified with line twelve, This flea is you and I. If the flea is symbolic of both the speaker

and his mate, then it can be assumed that the flea has also done as fleas would naturally. To suck

the blood of the speakers marriage, not in the literal sense however but with regard to marriages.

They are usually met with trouble, hardships, anger, happiness and are ultimately stable, until

they fall as it has for the speaker in The Flea. So, if the flea/marriage is sucking the blood of

two it then confirms that the marriage is unstable and has/will fall. Why? Well within the

confines of marriage there is always turmoil, however for some that often ends in the marriage

being a failure. The failure or flea in the marriage of our speaker and his wife, is that time has

passed and theyve reached a stalemate, nothing is happening to give life back to their marriage,

as such the flea is indeed sucking the blood of two.

With regards to the social/historical understanding of this poem, Donne was born and

lived through the Elizabethan era. Widely known for being very conservative when it came to

sex. During his time Donne secretly married Anne More, the seventeen-year-old niece of Lady

Egerton. Annes father, Sir George More, had Donne imprisoned (McManus). This experience I

believe provided Donne with a motif, being that he was imprisoned by his father-in-law he may

have re-evaluated his marriage to Anne More. This correlates well to my interpretation of the

speaker being broken in The Flea, due to raw emotion such as hate and depression. According

to McManus, The early years of Donnes marriage were characterized by frequent moves and

unsuccessful requests for employment. This is relevant today as most whom have been
imprisoned usually suffer from this side-effect. However, in regards to The Flea, Donne could

have also taken this experience and subtly put the blame on his wife as she could be the

reasoning for why the speaker expresses a sense of being cheated. In this case due to the

marriage the speaker had to go through multiple instances in which he felt used or unwanted

however for the sake of marriage he stayed with his wife, but blames her and her family for what

they have done to him. For instance, It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, (Line 3) brings

both experiences together as to say it wasnt the speakers fault that the marriage failed and it

was the due to imprisonment and unemployment that came from marriage, this came from his

wifes family more specifically is referencing her uncle whom had not agreed with their marriage

causing them to have a rough start to what would have been a more happier time of their lives

but instead had given birth to the flea entity that is expressed in the prose. Lastly, as A.J. Smith

points out, Donne's reluctance to become a priest, as he was several times urged to do, does not

argue a lack of faith. (Smith) This being the later part of his life, and was possibly the only

recourse he had for employment, for a man of faith to be writing about sex would scrutinize his

credibility as such. This also plays into the symbolism that comes to mind as the poem talks of

blood, being that he was a man of God this references the blood of Christ as well as the

bringing of life to the speakers marriage.

With this such evidence, as how Donne was in the middle part to later part of his

marriage I can strongly assert my interpretation as valid. In the case of formalism figure of

speech, unexpressed emotion and symbolism; Donne had set out to lay his own experiences out

for others to read. As such the common interpretation was born due to the time period The Flea

was written, which is reflected in its diction if read word for word. However, as words change

with feeling and rhythm as explained earlier the carry a deeper connotation than that of sexual
overtone. Poetry is feeling, it is expression, its experiences that draw readers to it not how its

written. The Flea is an excellent poem for its accepted interpretation, but also should be

applauded for its true intention to show the speaker through a small lens. A pinnacle point of

their life, the point where life, love and marriage turned a holy man, broken and cheated.
 Works Cited

Smith, A. J. "John Donne." Seventeenth-Century British Nondramatic Poets: First Series, edited by

M. Thomas Hester, Gale, 1992. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 121. Literature Resource

Center,

McManus, Caroline. "John Donne." Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia, January.

EBSCOhost,