The Flea

The John Donne poem I chose was the flea. It consists of 3 stanzas each containing 9 lines. I enjoyed the poem because of the imagery it provides the reader. It is about a flea inside the house of a married couple that seems to have sexual tension so when the flea takes blood from each of them and combines the blood inside it the narrator notes how that is more than the couple has done. The wife goes to kill the flea but the narrator asks her to spare the life of the flea because they are now part of it with their blood inside it. She does not listen and kills the flea on her fingernail and when asked why she responds that neither of them is less because she killed the flea which figuratively shows that she would not lose anything if she would "yield to him" meaning that sleeping with him would be no different than killing the innocent flea.