Even though a man can choose Death as an escape from the shackles of societal life, the other forces of nature can offer the same or even more therefore, Death has no superiority. Donne then goes back to criticizing Death for thinking so highly of itself. This seems like a very pessimistic view of life, which I believe could also correlate with Donne’s personal situation at the time of writing this poem. In the author’s perspective, Death brings “Much pleasures” (line 5) as it cures souls of the negativity of life. In the second quatrain, the speaker talks about Death’s good qualities: it releases beings from the suffering they experience on Earth. There could be implications behind this viewpoint as the speaker may have gone through certain experience(s) which led him to be unaffected by the idea of death.
I found this kind of interesting as the speaker “talks” to Death (which is usually seen as a scary force in nature) as if he is unafraid of it. The poet later suggests that Death cannot kill him, as it is not as powerful as other forces such as “fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” (line 9). He warns Death to “be not proud” (line 1) and not mistake its position as a “mighty and dreadful” force (line 2). In the first quatrain, Donne introduces the topic by personifying Death in order to compare its abilities and powers to other forces. In the third quatrain he switches his rhyme scheme to CDDC, and then the final couplet rhymes EE. This sonnet follows the Shakespearean form in that it is made up of 3 quatrains and a final couplet however, Donne uses the Italian sonnet rhyme scheme of ABBA for the first two quatrains, and he groups them into an octet. According to the speaker, Death does not possess control over humanity because there is a variety of more powerful forces that control human matters. The speaker talks to Death about how Death’s power is only an illusion and is a slace to other forces such as chance, fate, kings, and desperate men. John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” explores an argument about the power of death while addressing “Death” as a person.
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