Broken Heart

Broken Heart

John Donne’s poem “The Broken Heart” describes how love can devastate a man’s life.   Donne’s poem consists of dark imagery from a tortured heart that cannot endure love any more.   His tone of the poem is of an emotional man who feels he cannot find love because love is cruel to him.   Throughout the poem, the speaker is questioning himself if love is something he should pursue; this adds to his grief and misery.   The speaker explains how a woman broke his heart and, thus believing that love is only brings emptiness and sorrow in one’s life.
Donne uses dark words to describe the trials and challenges the speaker went through.   Words like “grief,” “decays,” “pity,” and “tyrant” bring up the tone and mood of the poem.   The overall tone of the poem is gloomy, even though some words like “love” and “heart” seem like lighter words.   However, the speaker’s negative words over power the lighter words, making love impossible to be real.   To the speaker, love is not real because if love were real, no one would feel emotional and physical pain.
Donne uses words that describe loneliness to explain that every heart that is given to someone else will turn out empty.   The speaker is a man who is alone and empty.   He describes his loneliness by saying “I brought a heart into a room, but from the room, I carried one with me.”   This statement illustrates the speaker bringing a woman into his life and making him feel that she does not accept his love by faking her feelings toward him.   The speaker feels that love makes people empty inside.   Love shows no pity for the tortured heart, and the speaker believes that love is just an empty box.
Donne adds in imagery that has some kind of metaphor.   The speaker says, “He swallows us, and never chaws.”   The speaker means that love never takes the time to taste.   When people eat food, the chew it, not only to make the food smaller, but also to taste the food better.   According to the speaker,...