The Flea

Observation: In the poem The Flea by John Donne, a man attempts to convince a woman to have premarital sex with him. The man argues that them having sex is no worse then a flea biting both of them. As the poem goes on, the woman almost leaves, is convinced to stay, and eventually kills the flea to make her point. Although the poem has action and another character, the poem consists of only the man's words. Everything else that occurs we must infer from what he says.

Conclusion: I believe that John Donne wrote the poem in this fashion to give a sense of the one-track mind the man has. To the man anything the woman says or does is merely an afterthought.

Question: Do you agree or disagree? If you disagree why do you think Donne wrote the poem this way?

"Home Burial" by Robert Frost

In this poem, Robert Frost focuses on two people's inability to use language to communicate their individual dilemmas. The husband "can't . . . speak of his own child he's lost" because his "words are nearly always an offense," and he can't ask the right question because his wife says he doesn't "know how to ask it." The wife, Amy, is inarticulate in her despair, and while she says that her husband has no right to talk because he isn't grieving appropriately, she herself cannot sufficiently capture her emotions in words. When her husband says to her, "There, you have said it all and you feel better, " she reacts with contempt: "You - oh, you think the talk is all. I must go -" Frost uses dialogue to reveal the anger and frustration of both the husband and wife and their difficulty communicating, and in turn makes their exchange more sincere and heartbreaking.

The majority of the poem is dialogue between Amy and her husband. Frost purposely does this to show how a death can change a relationship and create emotions that are hard to process and share. Neither of them can use language authoritatively, and this condemns them both to unhappiness because they cannot maturely communicate their distress. This causes an argument that ends in Amy leaving.

Does one speaker show more control, through dialogue, and thus more good sense than the other?