Death? A Mere Mortal? (Gasp!)

Well, I want to start off by saying I'm sorry about how lengthy and english-paper-esque
my first Donne (or should I say finished?) blog was. I promise it won't sound so void of personality in the future, so I's like to, ironically, begin with a sonnet about the seemingly finite-death. Upon reading this for the first time (sophomore year) I felt indifferent to it all, thinking that the concept of an afterlife as the ultimate defeat of death was cliche. At this point in time, I'm pretty comfortable with this piece, and after getting acquainted with my pal Johnny Donne,
have come to appreciate the recurrence of themes he shows-especially those about the "defeat" of death and needlesness of mourning, as the afterlife awaits. Can you imagine what this was like for his day? I wonder how people responded. Anyway, in Death Be Not Proud, Donne personifies death in order to emphasize the tone-which is somewhat mocking toward Death, as well as increase the impact of his message: Death is merely a natural event, existing to "cleanup"the mess of fate, etc, defeated by the afterlife.

By capitalizing the word, Death becomes a proper noun (person, place..). To me, this takes Death off of its platform. Let me explain- By personifying Death, Donne takes death, once a feared and
powerful "mighty and dreadful" (2) tragedy, Death becomes a being, or, like a human, mortal. Since Death has become mortal, he/she is ripe for the criticism, as well as death. From here on out, I saw it like this: the speaker of the poem is empowered, confident that death is weak. Why? The speaker clearly rises above and says "Wait! I believe that you, Death, appear like sleep-yep, a nice relaxing rest. And you know what? You aren't so tough. Hell! Fate calls on you-you work for free, cleaning up the results. Oh, and by the way-you can't kill me, nor can you kill anybody else-we wake from you and live in eternal life, so you will cease to live!" That basically says it-note how empowered this tone is-"One short sleep past we wakeeternally and death shalt be no more; Death, thou shalt die."13-14 Isn't it self-explanatory? The speaker's tone of voice is so
empowered, so mocking of Death because Death has essentially become a person-like one of us- capable of feeling our weakness and mortality.