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No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne
| Submitted Date |
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Friday, January 03, 2003 |
| Submitted Date |
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Sunday, March 13, 2011 |
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Read poems about / on: sea, death, friend
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Comments about this poem (No man is an island
by
John Donne
) |
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Smoky Hoss (2/21/2011 7:33:00 PM)
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What would have diminished Donne more, the death of Hitler or the death of the millions in Europe who died due to his leadership?
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Howard 'the motivational poet' Simon (2/21/2011 6:02:00 PM)
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As humans we are social beigns; we need relationships in order to survive. Though all nations aspire to be independent, the cry of the human heart is for interdependence. We need each other!
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Herman Chiu (2/21/2010 9:25:00 PM)
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And let mankind's civilizations never forget: Faith and Unity.
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Edmund Wong (2/21/2010 8:22:00 PM)
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I don't think Craddock is comparing Donne with Hitler. He is merely saying not all men are equal: some of them are so evil and injurious to the rest that they should not be part of humanity. If we define 'man' to be someone who deserves to be part of humanity in which every man, connected to one another, promotes the welfare of mankind as a whole, then Hitler and his likes can hardly NOT be excluded as “men”. What Donne expresses is not an argument but a petition for mercy and sympathy licensed to poetry.
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Michael Pruchnicki (2/21/2010 6:02:00 PM)
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Relax, Craddock! Fear not, the 'poem' is really a meditation on our short span of life, written by a devout cleric who had endured his share of trespassing on what he considered God's laws. The most Donne ever did wrong was engage in some adulterous behavior with the ladies of the court! To even compare this devout man with Adolf Hitler (or Josef Stalin who was a novice cleric in the Russian Orthodox faith as a young man) is to confuse apples with oranges! One named Donne did his damned-est to disobey his God but consider the monsters known as Hitler and Stalin and what they wrought! Note also that in the West (including the USA and the UK) Stalin is forgiven his destruction of entire nations from the Volga to the Yalu and beyond!
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Terence George Craddock (2/21/2010 9:51:00 AM)
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I too like this poem, yet I cannot agree with it. Adolf Hitler is dead and I am not diminished one iota by his death. Nor am I diminished by the death of any other tyrant like him. Either before or after him. Shame on any who are. Those clods destroyed a lot more of Europe and other countries than I care to witness. The measure of that totaled loss of life and art, not to mention the suffering they caused, is no part of an island of my being.
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JOSEPH POEWHIT (2/21/2010 3:54:00 AM)
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The body has many parts, so did the Frankenstein monster. Though, I think Donne had a different perspectine of the parts body view.
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Leonard Dabydeen (2/21/2010 1:48:00 AM)
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The strength of a chain is in its weakest link. All are important. All are consumate to the whole. Man shall not live by himself, but by the wisdom he acquires over time from his strengths and failures in the the environment he lives.
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Ramesh T A (2/21/2010 1:18:00 AM)
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Though each one is an individual like island all are part of the whole. Loss of one is a little loss of strength of the whole indeed!
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Lawrence Linehan (1/12/2010 8:34:00 AM)
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Dear David Ogden,
possibly the 'spellcheck' and 'autocorrect' facilities were disabled on his word processor that day - you knew what he meant anyway didn't you?
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