Blog 5-Death, Be Not Proud

Death, Be Not Proud, by John Donne, seeks to have people reexamine death as not being so much a means of end but a beginning. Death should not be viewed as dreadful, but comparable to a pleasurable sleep with a new awakening to eternal life. "Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so..from rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, much pleasure,"(Donne,971). Death is equated with rest and awakening once again to realize death itself is dead. To prove, "One short sleep passed, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die,"(Donne,972). Additionally, Donne incorporates rhetorical question into the text. "Why swell'st thou then,"(Donne,972)? Throughout, Donne has much conviction that death is not to be feared and is asking why one should worry at all about death. Donne so confidently believes in eternal life and the absence of total death, that he is confused at any uncertainty of this being so.