Hack 1

Brian Hack

ENG 45123

September 5th, 2021

Week 2 Assignment

Struggling With The Divine

In John Donne’s sonnet 1 from Holy Sonnets, Divine Meditations, the speaker ruminates

the cyclical process of Christian life where one deals with suffering, whether imposed or self-

inflicted during periods of boredom, by reaffirming God’s contract with each believer

(Damrosch and Dettmar, 1603-1604).

To begin, Donne reaffirms his submission to God’s authority which entails forfeiting all

he has in the event that this authority requires that be done. This is then when an apostrophe is

used in order to call God’s attention to him.

It seems to be a synecdoche that Donne is using here, since it is not God whom he

proceeds to discuss but perhaps it is rather the contract between God and each believer.

After the apostrophe, Donne appears to proceed through allegory to paint the standard

contract that exists between a Christian believer and God. Through this process, Donne reaffirms

the elementary concepts and objects involved within this contract, in addition to how it came

about. This also mentions historical patterns, within each believer’s life, where suffering has

been incurred and God rebuilds the believer’s loss of confidence in their own integrity.

Following the remembrance of the contract and how God has consistently upheld it,

Donne personifies the Devil as an actor who is constantly attacking, stealing, and otherwise

encouraging Donne to join them instead of following the authority of God under said contract.
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It is here where Donne alludes to the licentiousness he enjoys when following the

personified Devil, yet claims to have been unwillingly married to these ends. The allusion is

likely due to Donne forgetting that it was he who had decided, instead of following God’s

contract, to pursue actions with the Devil as an accomplice in breaking that contract.

However, when Donne performs repetition of how God historically honors His end of the

contract, Donne realizes that his allusion was a delusion and that it was his own will to break the

contract and that the Devil had no part in that. Thus, Donne addresses the despair which will

overtake him as he hopes that God will forgive his willful disregard of the contract.

At the end of the sonnet, while Donne repeats the acknowledgment that God tends to

forgive even if Donne is unsure that he has properly repented, he recognizes that the Devil does

not wish to lose an accomplice.

This ending appears to be a cliché whenever one peruses Christian literature. The Devil

despises how a Christian remains faithful to God, and God to the Christian, and likely wishes

that the Christian would continue licentious behavior without remembering their contract with

God.

All in all, Donne’s sonnet is a common form or trademark of Christian thought and

weekly contemplation of one’s life. If one approaches Christian thought, especially in such

dogmatically sounding sonnets as Donne’s, the reader is either to feel connected with the speaker

or they are repulsed due to the heavy usage of language such as being enslaved, undergoing loss

of sovereignty, or especially noting apparent superstition. Rather than accept the initial

dichotomy, the reader can also notice that whenever God is the object of apostrophe, the speaker

is struggling with the distinction between liberty and licentiousness.

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Works Cited

Damrosch, David, and Kevin J. H. Dettmar, editors. The Longman Anthology of British

Literature. 4th ed., vol. 1B, White Plains, NY: Longman, 2010.