Battles 1
Hannah Battles
Prof. Grant
ENGL 102-002
16 February 2022
Death Is the Enemy
Thesis: John Donne’s poem “Death, be not proud” uses an angry and forceful tone to personify
death as the enemy that we must fight against at all costs.
I. Death is the enemy personified.
A. Death will die in the end so there is a chance of defeating it.
B. Death is described as not being able to be overthrown or overcome, like an enemy
can be overthrown or overcome.
C. Death is proud which is a human sin.
II. There is an angry tone.
A. Many of his past acquaintances have succumbed to death.
B. He called those who succumbed to death petty names, like “slaves” and are
“desperate men”.
III. There is a forceful tone.
A. Death is called mighty and dreadful by some, but the narrator stresses that it is not
as mighty as it is perceived to be.
B. Death is considered to only be a nap, so it should be easy to overcome.
Battles 2
Hannah Battles
Prof. Grant
ENGL 102-002
21 February 2022
Death Is the Enemy
Death is the most certain thing in life and is impossible to avoid. However, given the
chance, people will try to fight against it. Death is perceived as a negative experience among the
world, but in a poem written by John Donne in the early sixteenth century, death can be an easily
conquered foe. In John Donne’s poem “Death, be not proud,” the poet uses an angry and forceful
tone to personify death as the enemy that humanity must fight against at all costs.
Death is personified as the enemy that humanity must fight against to the end. Death is
given human characteristics by Donne when he writes, “Death, be not proud,” as the first line
(1). Pride is a primarily human emotion, one that holds negative connotations and is usually
perceived in one considered as a villain. Villains are people that need to be defeated, and Donne
telling death not to be proud is expressing his negative inflection toward death. Furthermore, the
speaker proclaims, “Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me” (Donne 4). Death is not
something that can die nor be killed like a person can. Since the speaker is proclaiming death’s
inability to kill him, it implies that the speaker is fighting death like one would an enemy, even
though death is not a human being capable of dying. To emphasize death ability to be killed,
Donne says, “For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow . . . and death shall be no more;
death, thou shalt die” (3, 14). Death cannot be overthrown and killed like people can, and
because the speaker wants to kill it, it implies that he perceives death as the enemy needing to be
Battles 3
defeated. The personification of death is clear in that Donne is leaving the impression that death
is an enemy in need of defeating.
While death is the enemy personified, Donne uses an angry tone to convey his feelings
toward death and the fight against it. As one can imagine, it is frustrating to lose loved ones.
Donne says in his poem, “And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones and
soul’s delivery” (7-8). The speaker is saying that the people closest to him have left with death
which can evoke anger in anyone. As an example of Donne’s rising anger toward death, he called
those who succumbed to death petty names as a grieve tactic, saying, “Thou art a slave to fate,
chance, kings, and desperate men” (9). Donne is speaking through his poem to portray his anger
toward those he lost in their fight against death as the enemy. If death was not such a strong
enemy, the poet would not be struggling and desperate for those he lost, and he would not be
fighting to the extent that he was. Anger is the main motivator for one’s urge to fight, which is
what Donne is demonstrating by calling his past loved one’s names and by recounting their
deaths.
In addition to having an angry tone toward death as the enemy, Donne implements a
forceful tone to drive his point across and its importance. The poet says that death is “Mighty and
dreadful, for thou art not so” (Donne 2). The poet wrote this to encourage others to fight against
death, because he says that, although death is perceived as frightening, it is not so terrifying, and
it should be beatable. To further encourage others to fight death, he downplays the experience
that is death by saying, “One short sleep passed, we wake eternally” (Donne 13). By
downplaying death like this, one should be more inclined to fight the enemy if it is described as
an easy task. By using strong words like “mighty”, “dreadful”, and “eternally,” Donne is forcing
Battles 4
into the reader’s mind the impact that death will have on them, further encouraging them to put
up a fight against death and the harm that it does.
John Donne’s poem “Death, be not proud” is portraying death as the enemy that
humanity must fight against using an angry and forceful tone. Death in this poem represented the
personification as the enemy and that we must fight it. The poem uses pride, death’s ability to
die, and the ability to be overthrown to give death human characteristics that represent a villain
or foe. Donne uses an angry and forceful tone to portray humanity’s need to fight against death
by calling those who succumb to death names and by downplaying the experience of death itself.
Humanity still tries to fight death, which takes a lot of force and inspiration, as Donne’s poem
portrays.
Battles 5
Work Cited
Donne, John. “Death, be not proud.” Perrine’s Literature, edited by Greg Johnson and Thomas
R. Arp, Cengage, 2016, pp. 955-956.
