Gianna Braga

Ms Gardner
English 10/ Period 4
16 September 2015

In Sonnet 145, the speakers misunderstanding about his supposed unrequited love shows
loves cruel, deceptive power: love blinds and causes people to believe things that are not true.
Shakespeare uses dramatic diction to demonstrate how love causes strong emotions that might
not be accurate. Words like doom and woeful not only have a very gloomy sound, but are
also words with a very depressing meaning and connotation. Those words express the way the
speaker is feeling as he thinks his heart is being broken by his love. The extreme way the speaker
is feeling helps to justify the effect love can have on someone and their judgement.
Shakespeares use of figurative language also aids in showing how love clouds your
mind. It shows how people think and do overdramatic things in the name of love. He uses a
hyperbole with a very strong literal meaning when the speaker learns his love is not lost: and
saved my life, (14). She is not saving his life literally and he is not dying. The happiness that the
speaker is feeling is communicated in a very melodramatic way through that comparison to
saving his life. There is also the use of words that are exact opposite ...gentle day/ Doth follow
night, (10-11) and From heaven to hell is flown away; (12). These contradictions are like
small metaphors for the overall drastic change of emotion in the sonnet. The speaker goes from
depressed and heartbroken to so happy he thinks his life has been saved. The metaphors mirror
that sudden change in emotion and supports the idea that love can deceive one and lead them to
believe the worst.