The Indifferent By John Donne

In today’s society, acknowledging diversity and allowing for inclusion amongst different people is a huge deal. In John Donne’s Sonnet, The Indifferent, readers at first glance may assume that it would fit perfectly into today’s views about inclusion. However, as the reader progresses through the poem, they may come to a different interpretation of the text than was first conceived. The first 18 lines of the poem show the build up to John Donne’s final argument. These lines also contain a couple of lines with multiple interpretations. The first sentence seems innocent enough. The text states, “I can love both fair and brown, her whom abundance melts, and her whom masks and plays, her whom the country formed, and whom the town, her who still
The poem continues with, “I can love her, and her, and you, and you, I can love any, so she be not true.” (8-9) The beginning of this sentence starts out like a continuation of his previous sentence in that it seems he is just describing more women that he can love. Then, he goes on to say “and you, and you.” Now the meaning seems to have shifted unto that of someone pointing out different women in a crowd. This style of repetition gives the reader a sense of imagery of the author physically picking different women that are listening to him recite this poem, and telling them that he can love them. Still, up until this point, one could argue that he is merely showing a platonic love for others (women). Unfortunately, this idea is combatted by the next part of “so she be not true.” If John Donne was only wanting to love these women platonically, it would not matter if they were true. Now the sexual implications of the poem are becoming
The passage explains, “O we are not, be not you so; let me, and do you, twenty know. Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go. Must I, who came to travail thorough you, grow your fixed subject, because you are true?” (14-18) The author immediately begins by shutting down the women’s notion that men are even remotely true to them. If the men are not true, Donne reasons, the women should not be true either. The poet continues by saying he will go out and “love”, or have sex with, at least twenty others, so the women should go out and do the same. Here Donne is appealing to women that are striving for equality; he is allowing for equality on this issue, as long as the women sleep around too. The next line can be interpreted different ways. The Norton Anthology English Literature has a footnote that believes the word “travail” in this passage means grief, and the word “thorough” is to mean through. Therefore, the book’s interpretation of this sentence becomes something along the lines of, I came to you through grief. However, another interpretation of this sentence can be very sexual in nature; travail means to engage in painful or laborious effort, while thorough means completely without missing the smallest detail. Consequently, the author could mean he who ravished this woman completely to his satisfaction. John Donne finishes this portion with another