The Flea By John Donne

In “The Flea” by John Donne, a young man is propositioning a young woman with the soul reason being that both of their bloods are mixed in the body of a flea. This poem is a satiric look at the lengths men will go ignored to attain the attention of a woman. Throughout the poem the speaker is trying to win over his counter part by making connections between the union of their blood in the body of a minuscule flea and the much grander union of marriage or sexual relations. The holistic meaning of the piece is the desperation of the human spirit and the ridiculous lengths we as humans will go to in order to no longer sleep alone at night. This poem depicts the relationship between a young man and woman, the man believes that because a flea bit both of them they are meant to be together. His main reasoning is the union of their bloods in the flea. After she kills the flea the man then believes they must live out the life the flea desired for them.
The speaker begins his argument confidently and a bit forceful, later on in the poem he moves his argument to a more loving marital stance. The tone begins to shift between the second and third stanza when the object of his affection kills the only thing that binds them together. Here his tone shifts from confident and demanding to pleading and desperate. The next and last shift in tone is in stanza three, line five, the speaker switches his outlook from shock that the woman killed the only thing that linked them together, to a desire to not let the measly flea die in vain. This connects to the overall meaning of desperation and unsettled